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A woman who says she is the mother of a Placerville boy found dead said she learned the horrifying news from an article online.
Rochelle Lopez spoke to Sacramento TV station KOVR about the death of Roman Lopez, the 11-year-old who went missing Saturday.
“I had to find out my son died from a news article. Nobody called me, his dad didn’t call me,” she said.
Rochelle Lopez, who lives in Wisconsin, says she lost custody of her only son to his father after she returned from military service in Iraq with post-traumatic stress disorder and an addiction to painkillers. Since then, she said, “I’ve been trying to follow him from state to state to state so I could be with Roman.”
The Placerville police have released few details about the death of Roman. Several hours after he was reported missing, the police said only that he had been found. It wasn’t until Sunday afternoon that they revealed he was dead. They called the circumstances “suspicious.”
“We’re trying to keep as few details as possible (in) the public domain,” Police Chief Jim Ortega told KOVR, citing the demands of the investigation.
Roman’s father and stepmother had reportedly moved in December from Michigan to a home on Coloma Street, across from that of Placerville’s mayor. They brought along eight children: Roman, his stepmother’s four teenagers from a previous marriage, and three young children who were in the care of the stepmother.
That house was the focus of crime scene investigators on Sunday.
A Michigan woman, Kira Sutkay, told the Sacramento Bee that the three younger children are hers and that she had put them in the care of a woman named Lindsay Piper, who late last year left Michigan without Sutkay’s knowledge.
She said she was told that the seven children are now in the care of El Dorado County Child Protective Services. That agency would not confirm the information.
Sutkay identified Lindsay Piper’s husband as Jordan Piper. She told the Bee she recognized in news video from Placerville the silver pickup truck that he had used in his work as a lineman in Michigan. Piper’s name was on the fliers that were posted in Placerville when the boy went missing.
Correction: The initial story said there were three teenagers in the household who were from Roman’s father’s previous marriage. There were actually four teenagers, and they were from the stepmother’s previous marriage. Law enforcement officials have since confirmed that Roman’s father is Jordan Piper.
