(L.A.) Solé Steele, a Baby, Died on the 405 Freeway

Case Number: 2024-05827

Los Angeles County is reporting the death of a seven-month-old female that occurred on the 405 Freeway in Culver City.

The coroner’s office identified the infant girl as Sole Steele and gave her race as Black + Hispanic.

Manner of Death: Homicide

Cause of Death: Multiple Blunt-Force Traumatic Injuries

RIP SOLÉ STEELE (August 31, 2023 – April 8, 2024)

Formal pronouncement of death was made on Monday at 4:44 a.m.

Ruling by the deputy medical examiner was published on June 12.

Along with an injured nine-year-old girl, the decedent was discovered lifeless by California Highway Patrol. Her death was linked to a murder in Woodland Hills and a fatal crash in Redondo Beach.

First responders had been called at around 4:30 a.m. to the northbound lanes of the freeway near the Howard Hughes Parkway and Sepulveda Boulevard exit. There, they found the infant and her sister.

The baby girl was declared deceased at the scene. The older girl was taken to a hospital for moderate injuries.

They apparently had been pushed out of a car by their mother.

Half an hour later, the mother died in a vehicular accident on Pacific Coast Highway near Vincent Street in Redondo Beach. She was 34-year-old Danielle Cherakiyah Johnson.

Then at around 7:35 a.m. more than 30 miles away from the crash site, LAPD received a call about a “possible victim down” at the Montecito Apartments in the 6200 block of Variel Avenue in Woodland Hills.

A neighbor had been briefly woken up by a commotion at 3:40 a.m. It was later learned that a man named Jaelen Chaney, 29 years of age, had been stabbed dead by Johnson.
 

GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/family-of-Jaelen-Chaney-and-baby-Sole