HOLLYWOOD, FL — The last photograph is time-stamped 8:50 p.m. on January 5, 2025.
In it, a Hollywood Police detective wrote, the infant girl was showing no signs of life. After that date, according to an arrest affidavit, the child never appeared in another photo or video recovered from the couple's devices. Everything after that shows only the two adults.
More than 18 months later, on July 22, 2026, Samantha Angelina Feliz, 20, and Alejandro Leon Jr., 21, were arrested in Rockingham, North Carolina, on Broward County warrants charging each with aggravated manslaughter of a child, according to the Hollywood Police Department.
Both were taken into custody shortly after 9 a.m. with help from the Richmond County Sheriff's Office and the U.S. Marshals Service, Hollywood Police said in a July 23, 2026 media release. Both were being held at the Richmond County Jail awaiting extradition to Broward County.
The records provided do not indicate the child has been found.
Boca Post is not naming the infant or the relatives who first raised concerns, consistent with victim-protection practice in child death cases.
The charges
Circuit Judge Michael J. Orlando signed both arrest warrants on July 8, 2026, in the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit in and for Broward County, court records show. Each warrant lists Count I as aggravated manslaughter of a child under Florida Statute 782.07(3), and each carries a no-bond hold on counts one through five, with the defendants to be held for magistrate.
Hollywood Police said the warrants charge both with aggravated manslaughter of a child, tampering with or fabricating physical evidence, failure to report a death to the Medical Examiner's Office, false information concerning a missing child, and false reports to law enforcement during an investigation.
The charging language in the affidavit alleges that between December 6, 2024, and January 5, 2025, each defendant, while acting as a caregiver to the infant, failed to provide food, nutrition, shelter, supervision, medicine and medical care that a prudent person would consider essential, and that the child died as a result.
Charges are allegations. Neither defendant has been convicted of anything in this case.
How the case started
The investigation began with a phone call, not a body.
On July 22, 2025, a family member contacted Hollywood Police with concerns about the welfare of the child, according to the affidavit written by Detective Nancie Toler, a 26-year officer assigned to the department's Criminal Investigations Division Homicide Unit since 2011. The relative reported that Feliz gave birth to a girl in the first week of December 2024, and that no one in the family had seen the child in months.
The relative told investigators that Feliz and Leon had spent about two weeks at his home earlier that July without the child and never mentioned her, the affidavit states. When he asked where she was, the affidavit says, the couple told him the baby had been part of a scam and denied ever having a child.
A welfare and missing person report was accepted that same day, and homicide detectives were assigned.
What investigators say the records showed
Detectives worked backward through public records, family accounts and digital evidence.
A Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office report from December 5, 2024, documented a disturbance involving Feliz and a roommate and noted she was pregnant, the affidavit states. Body-worn camera video from that call captured her with an apparently extended belly. In August 2024, the affidavit says, Feliz listed her status as pregnant on a benefits application. The Department of Children and Families tried to verify the pregnancy from August 2024 to February 2025 without success, and in February 2025 she submitted a form saying she had checked the box in error and was never pregnant.
Family members described seeing the baby alive. One relative recorded video of the infant in a sling on Feliz's lap during a dinner at a LongHorn Steakhouse in Hollywood on December 20, 2024, according to the affidavit, and visited the couple's Hollywood home about a week later, where he saw baby items throughout the house and had no concerns.
Warrant returns from Google produced a large volume of photos of the child and both defendants caring for her between December 19, 2024, and January 5, 2025, the affidavit says. Investigators wrote that the child appeared healthy on December 21, 2024, and that in the final images from the first week of January she appeared ill and malnourished. No videos of the child are dated after December 29, 2024.
By March 2025, according to the affidavit, Feliz was telling people the child had never existed. Asked about the baby at a Hollywood park, she said, "what baby, there is no baby," the affidavit states. Detectives wrote that she has since maintained the pregnancy was a hoax and that she was scamming people for money.
The storage unit
The couple was evicted from their Hollywood residence on February 25, 2025, and became homeless, the affidavit says. They rented a unit at a Safe Guard Storage facility in May 2025 and were later removed after being accused of living out of it.
On July 23, 2025, a person who had rented a unit at the same facility signed a consent form allowing Hollywood detectives to search it. Inside, according to the affidavit, officers found mattresses and a box spring stacked as though used for sleeping, bags of clothing and household items, Feliz's birth certificate and Social Security card, and baby clothes and a diaper in a blue bag. Detectives stopped the search and secured the unit pending a warrant.
A search warrant signed by Circuit Judge Andrew L. Siegel produced baby clothing, a positive home pregnancy test, a handgun, a towel that appeared to be stained with blood, three notebooks referencing a gender reveal and a baby shower, and multiple electronic devices, the affidavit states. Cadaver dogs searched the surrounding property and garbage areas with negative results.
The provided records do not list a firearm charge among the five counts.
Palm Beach County connection
The couple was located that summer at 1200 W. Drew Street near Maddock Dog Park in Lantana, in Palm Beach County, where Lantana Police detained them, according to the affidavit. Both were taken to the Lantana Police Station and interviewed separately by Hollywood detectives.
In those interviews, the affidavit says, both maintained that Feliz had never been pregnant and never gave birth, and said the story was fabricated so their families would feel sorry for them and give them money. Feliz told detectives she had worn a prosthetic belly, according to the affidavit, and both said investigators would never find a record of any baby.
Lantana Detective C. Vargas executed warrants for the couple's phones and a laptop and for DNA standards from both, the affidavit states. The devices and samples were turned over to Hollywood Police.
Lab and agency findings
On September 19, 2025, the Broward Sheriff's Office Crime Laboratory reported the presence of blood on the baby clothing and towels recovered from the storage unit, with DNA interpreted as a mixture from two contributors, Feliz and Leon, according to the affidavit. Detectives requested kinship DNA testing to look for closely related individuals.
Hollywood Police and the Broward State Attorney's Office met on July 28, 2025, with DCF statewide child fatality specialists and Children's Medical Services, the affidavit says. A DCF vital statistics search found no birth certificate listing either defendant as a biological parent.
Where the case stands
The Hollywood Police Department case number is 33-2507-102635. The case is filed in Broward County Circuit Court, and the State Attorney's Office for the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit will decide what formal charges to file.
Both defendants remained in custody in Richmond County, North Carolina, pending extradition as of the July 23, 2026 police release. No defense attorney is listed in the records reviewed, and no first appearance date in Broward County was available.
Hollywood Police asked anyone with information to call 954-764-4357 or 954-967-4567, or to contact Broward Crime Stoppers at 954-493-8477.
The allegations in the arrest warrants and affidavits have not been proven in court.
See the latest Broward County arrests, including recent jail bookings, mugshots, and criminal charges filed across the county.
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