Calif. Sunday school teacher booked in child death

Melissa Huckaby, 28, was arrested late Friday about five hours after she drove herself to the local police station at the request of officers, said police Sgt. Tony Sheneman. She was being held without bail in connection with the death of Sandra Cantu, the San Joaquin County sheriff’s office said.

Sandra disappeared on March 27 and hundreds of volunteers and law enforcement officials turned out to search for her. On April 6, farmworkers draining an irrigation pond found the suitcase.

Huckaby walked into the police station Friday and started a conversation with officers, Sheneman said at a news conference.

“She was calm, cool and collected, then she became very emotional …. She went back and forth from being calm to emotional.”

Eventually, she became “resigned,” Sheneman said.

“I couldn’t begin to even theorize what her motive was,” he said.

Sheneman had earlier told The Associated Press that interviews with Huckaby in The Tracy Press had revealed inconsistencies that prompted further inquiries from investigators.

“I want to know why she did it, if she did it,” the slain girl’s aunt, Angie Chavez, said in a phone interview with The Associated Press early Saturday. She said she had no indication earlier that Huckaby could be a suspect.

Huckaby’s family had been questioned at length during the investigation, and their home and vehicles had been searched, Sheneman said.

Sheneman said investigators hadn’t expected that the suspect would turn out to be a woman.

“It’s unusual for it to be a woman statistically and according to the FBI,” he said at the news conference.

Discovering it was a woman and a member of the tight knit Tracy community who knew the family was “a double blow,” he said.

“Today’s going to be a very difficult day for everyone to digest that,” Sheneman said. “This was an anomaly in the murder of a child.”

“There’s still a lot of work to be done in the next several weeks to ensure that Miss Huckaby pays for what’s she’s done,” Sheneman said. “There are no other suspects in this case. We do not anticipate any other arrests in this case.”

Earlier Saturday, Police Chief Janet Thiessen said investigators had worked on the case tirelessly but that they probably were too late to save Sandra.

“We have information that Sandra, by the time she was reported missing to us, that she probably had already been murdered,” said Thiessen.

Neighbor Barbara Sokoloski, whose home is behind Sandra’s, described Sandra on Saturday as “a friendly sweet little girl who always went around trying to find somebody to play with.”

“It’s too bad that kids these days can’t go out and play like we did when I was a little girl,” said Sokoloski, 69.

Huckaby had told The Tracy Press that Sandra visited her home on the day of her disappearance to play with her 5-year-old daughter. But Huckaby said she’d turned Sandra away because her daughter needed to pick up her toys and Sandra went to another friend’s home. Huckaby also said she had left her suitcase in the driveway that day, and that it was missing.

The Tracy Press reported that Huckaby was released Thursday from Sutter Tracy Community Hospital, where she spent several days in intensive care for what she described as “internal bleeding.”

Huckaby is a granddaughter of Pastor Clifford Lawless, whose Clover Road Baptist Church was the subject of a police search. Huckaby taught Sunday school at the church and lived with Lawless in the Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park that also was Sandra’s home.

Lawless did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment Saturday.

Huckaby was scheduled to appear in court on April 17 to check in with a county mental health program as part of a three-year probation sentence for a petty theft she pleaded no contest to. She told the newspaper on Friday that someone else by the same name was facing charges for the attempted November theft from a Target store.