The body of a missing Southern California woman was found this weekend at the bottom of an embankment in the Angeles National Forest, according to authorities.
Officials are now searching for her husband, whom they say fled to Peru with the couple’s three children.
The remains of 33-year-old Sheylla Cabrera, also known as Sheylla Lisbet Gutiérrez Rosillo, were found Saturday by the Montrose Search and Rescue Team, according to a statement from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Her body was discovered wrapped in some sort of material, though the department did not elaborate. A precise cause of death has not yet been established and is being investigated by the L.A. County medical examiner’s office, authorities said.
The department’s Lancaster station took a missing person’s report regarding Cabrera on Aug. 12, authorities said. The next day, deputies found video surveillance footage allegedly showing a man authorities identified as her husband, Jossimar Cabrera, dragging an object “in a large piece of material” from an apartment complex in the 500 block of Lancaster Boulevard, where the couple lived with their three sons.
Authorities in L.A. County cast a wide net to search for Jossimar Cabrera, 36, and the three boys. Homicide investigators also reached out to Mexican and Peruvian consular officials to alert them of their interest in Jossimar Cabrera.
On Saturday, the children were recovered unharmed in Peru after they entered the country with their father, according to the Peruvian Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations. The whereabouts of Jossimar Cabrera, however, remain unknown.
The ministry has since come under fire because officials questioned Jossimar Cabrera at the airport in Lima and took the children into protective custody, but didn’t detain him, according to several Peruvian media sources.
He is believed to still be in the country, L.A. County officials said.
The ministry also posted about the death of Sheylla Cabrera on social media, which it later deleted, before alerting her family.
“We deeply regret its publication, as it has jeopardized the investigation underway in the United States and also the work being done in Peru,” Jessy Gutiérrez, Sheylla Cabrera’s sister, told the outlet Latina Noticias. “I ask the Ministry to exercise greater care and consideration when reporting, out of respect for my sister’s memory.”
Peru’s foreign ministry confirmed Saturday via social media that it had repatriated the children back to Los Angeles via Mexico City to be reunited with their mother’s family.
Sheylla Cabrera’s mother, Helga Rocillo, told Latina Noticias that her daughter was intent on filing a criminal report against her husband due to alleged psychological and physical abuse.
“She told me that Jossimar Cabrera Cornejo hit her, mistreated her, and even slapped my youngest grandchild, who is 3 years old,” Rocillo told the outlet.
Both the L.A. County Sheriff Department’s public information officer and the Montrose rescue squad declined to answer questions from The Times. They directed all inquiries to Sheriff’s Department detectives, who did not return a call Tuesday.
Sheriff’s detectives are in the process of presenting the case to the L.A. County district attorney’s office for filing consideration, and plan to seek a murder charge against Jossimar Cabrera, authorities said.
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