Rodriguez, 35, is still on the loose. Campbell police say he fled after beating his former girlfriend's 3-year-old daughter Dejah. The little girl was found with a black eye, bruises on her face and stomach in a garage.
Police say it was the suspect's son, a 15-year-old boy living in the house, who discovered the little girl in a rolled up carpet.
Police say Dejah was then picked up by a friend and taken to her mother,
The 15-year-old, troubled by his discovery, eventually called police. But by then the girl's mother Jane Marin had disappeared with the child. Two days later, the little girl and her mother were found in a shopping center parking lot near Santa Teresa Boulevard and Bernal Road in San Jose.
"It's an area that we had some information that she may have some friends in that area and so they developed some leads that she was possibly going to this particular parking lot," Campbell Police Department spokesperson Capt. Dave Carmichael said after finding Marin and her daughter.
A neighbor says she was not surprised. Police had been to the house in the past.
"We would go and look and they would try to hop over this fence, like trying to get them, and tell them to come out; it's happened, like, numerous times," Vanessa Thaller said.
"It's very unfortunate, it's very sad, a beautiful 3-year-old; no we had no idea, very quiet, although they do have some issues with that neighborhood, with that area, but other than that it's a great neighborhood," neighbor Sondra Ostergaard said.
The mother is in custody but Rodriguez has not been found. Police are commending the boy for coming forward, under what they recognize were difficult circumstances.
Although Campbell police had asked for the media and public's help in finding Rodriguez, they declined to comment on the story.
