SAN ANTONIO — A community is one step closer to closure after the gut-wrenching discovery of a baby found mummified in a trunk during a drug raid last year.
On Friday, the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office tentatively identified the baby as 3-month-old Devin Stripling.
Pamela Allen, the executive director for Eagles Flight Advocacy & Outreach, a nonprofit that helps bury abused and abandoned babies, says it’s been a long and agonizing investigation. She said she just wants to give Devin the proper burial he deserves and the peace the neighborhood needs.
July marks one year since Allen stepped foot at 7902 Bronco Lane on the west side. It’s the home where Bexar County deputies found the boy.
"He was in a suitcase wrapped in a baby blanket," Allen said. "This life had breath behind him and a heartbeat. This life had significance."
Allen said some neighbors named the baby after the street of the home where he was found dead.
"Some of them started calling him Lane, for Bronco Lane," she said.
Neighbors say knowing the baby’s real name is one step closer to closure.
Allen, herself a mother, said the investigation has been long and frustrating. She says knowing Devin is sitting in a cooler until the investigation wraps up is an unsettling thought.
"There is a baby who has been in a cooling unit that still needs to be honored and still needs to be given dignity by a proper burial," Allen said.
Officials with the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office say once the final autopsy reveals the cause of death, Devin can be laid to rest. The final piece of the investigation will determine if foul play was a factor in the boy's death.
Twelve people were arrested during the drug raid last year, but no one was charged with Devin's death. The parents of Stripling have not been identified.
Allen wants to remind people of the Baby Moses Law in Texas, which allows parents unable to care for their baby to take their child to a designated Safe Haven. Babies can be dropped off with an employee at any hospital, fire station or emergency medical service, but they must be 60 days old or younger.