Body Found Inside Merced Home Could be of Missing 8-Year-Old Girl: Hayward Police
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Just complete and total shock so hard to believe,” said Melonie Verlatti, who has known Sophia since she was born.
Verlatti’s aunt Sylvia raised Sophia’s mother and when the girl came along, she raised her too.
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We saw her a few months ago and now to see this it doesn’t seem real,” said Verlatti, adding that keeping in contact with Sophia was a problem.
“Periodily her mom would come into her life take her away and said she was going to raise her on her own and she didn’t need my aunt to do it for her,” she said. “She wasn’t mentally competent to do it on her own. My aunt repeatedly called CPS and police but they didn’t take her seriously.”
Sources tell NBC Bay area that Johnson, Sophia’s mother, told a family member that she had given the 8-year-old away.
Detectives spent days tracing a number of phones belonging to Johnson and that led them to a Newark Hotel where she was arrested.
“They made contact with the mother, Samatha Johnson, trying to find her daughter,” said Joey Perez of the Merced Police Department. “She gave some suspicious inconsistent statements. They ask us if we could go to an address to check on the mother and child.”