(CNN) -- Police have arrested a Sunday-school teacher in the killing of California 8-year-old Sandra Cantu, authorities said early Saturday.

Melissa Huckaby, seen in a mugshot released by police, was arrested in the killing of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu.


Melissa Huckaby was arrested on charges of kidnapping and murder, according to Tracy, California, police Sgt. Tony Sheneman.

Police would not reveal what led to Huckaby's arrest, but said it followed questioning. They did not offer a possible motive.

Huckaby lived in the same mobile home park as Sandra's family, and Sandra was friends with Huckaby's daughter, Sheneman said.

Sandra's body was found Monday, stuffed into a suitcase in a dairy-farm pond. The girl, from Tracy, had been missing since March 27. The suitcase that held Sandra's body belonged to Huckaby, Sheneman said.

Police have had contact with Huckaby before, but she does not have a record of violence, Sheneman said, without offering further details.

An autopsy was conducted on Sandra's body on Tuesday. Autopsy results are not expected for four to six weeks, CNN affiliate KRON-TV reported earlier in the week, citing the coroner's office.

Police have conducted hundreds of interviews in the case.

On Tuesday, authorities searched a Baptist church near the mobile home park where Sandra lived.

The church's pastor, Lane Lawless, and his wife, Connie, spoke to KRON as they drove by the church Tuesday. Lawless said police had seized computers, phones and other items from his family's trailer, located in the same park as Sandra's family. He said his great-granddaughter regularly played with Sandra.

"We've been in the park for 13 years, and we've known her and her sister since before they were born," Connie Lawless told KRON. "So they're like children to us; they're like our children."

The day Sandra was last reported seen, she returned home from school, kissed her mother and left to play with a friend who lives nearby. A short time later, wearing a pink Hello Kitty T-shirt and black leggings, she left to go to another friend's home, according to a family spokeswoman.

Police said the girl's clothing helped them identify her body

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TRACY, CA (KGO) -- Tracy Police have arrested Melissa Huckaby on murder and kidnapping in the case of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu.


Police questioned the 28-year-old woman for several hours Friday evening before making the arrest at 11:55 p.m. Huckaby is the grand-daughter of Clifford Lane Lawless, pastor of the Clover Road Baptist Church. She is also a Sunday school teacher at the church.

"She gave enough information to us during the course of the interview that probable cause was there to arrest her," said Tracy Police Sgt. Tony Sheneman.

After a previsous search on Monday, the church was searched once more Friday night. Investigators returned to that location after Huckaby told a reporter at the Tracy Press newspaper that her black suitcase had been stolen the day Sandra disappeared. Monday, Sandra's body was found in a black Eddie Bauer suitcase in an irrigation pond close to the mobile home park where she lived.

The slain girl's aunt, Angie Chavez, said in a phone interview with The Associated Press early Saturday that she was happy to learn of the arrest.

"I want to know why she did it, if she did it," Chavez said.

Huckaby's Kia SUV was among cars searched by police over the past few days.

ABC7 spoke to the Tracy reporter who spoke to Huckaby and asked if she had reported any of this to police.

"She came back and reported it to the manager of the mobile home park and then called Tracy police and asked about how she could file a police report, which she said she never got around to," said the reporter.

"We have no police report that a suitcase was stolen," said Sgt. Sheneman.

Huckaby was scheduled to appear in court on April 17 to check in with a county mental health program as part of a three-year probation sentence for a petty theft she pleaded no contest to. In an interview with the newspaper on Friday, Huckaby said someone else by the same name was facing charges for the attempted November theft from Target.

Police earlier said they were looking into a tip from a man who said he saw a strange truck in the area where Sandra's body was found, a few days before it was discovered.

"We don't really get many people down that road, so it was something I remember and something I thought was suspicious," said Tracy resident Stephen Memory.

19-year-old Memory lives just down the road from the irrigation ditch where Sandra's located on Monday. A Stockton police cadet told ABC7 three days before the discovery that he saw a strange man in a pickup truck that was faced the wrong way, by the side of the road.

"It was a Chevy Silverado with a couple inch lift on it with wider set tires, and it was tan colored, a newer model Chevy Silverado with a 40 to 50-year-old man in the car by himself. He was wearing a baseball cap. He didn't want to look at me too much," said Memory.

Memory says the FBI did take his information. Tracy police did not confirm if the sighting near the irrigation pond figures into their investigation.

In the meantime, Sandra's body was released from the San Joaquin County Coroner's office. She will be interred at the Tracy Mausoleum. A marker with the little girl's name on it is being prepared. The public place for mourning has also moved from the mobile home park where Sandra lived to Fry's Memorial Chapel.

TRACY, CA -- Tracy Police arrested 28-year old Sunday school teacher Melissa Huckaby around 2 a.m. Saturday Morning on suspicion of kidnapping and murdering of 8 year old Sandra Cantu.

During a 3 a.m. news conference Saturday morning Tracy Police Chief Janet Thiessen, was called in to speak. She said "over the course of the investigation, agents and investigators from numerous agencies, have been instrumental in identifying Melissa Huckaby as being responsible for Sandra's death."

While she would not elaborate on the cause of death, Thiessen went on to say "We have information that Sandra, by the time she was reported missing to us, probably had already been murdered."

The arrest was made more than two weeks after Sandra was last seen outside her home at the Orchard Estates Mobile home park.

Huckaby is the granddaughter of Lane Lawless, the pastor of Clover Road Baptist Church. On Friday, Tracy police and the FBI searched the Church and the surrounding area for a second time looking for evidence in her death.

Huckaby teaches Sunday school at the church.

Earlier this week, Huckaby told the Tracy Press her black suitcase was stolen on March 27th the same day that Sandra disappeared. Sandra's body was found just days later in a suitcase left in an irrigation pond just two miles from her home.

Tracy police now say that Huckaby's story about the suitcase being stolen is a lie, and Sgt. Tony Sheneman confirmed the suitcase Sandra was found in belongs to Huckaby.

Sheneman said during her interview with officers Huckaby gradually came to terms with her situation.

"She was very relaxed for a bit, then she became very emotional, then she became relaxed again, then she became resigned to what was happening," Sheneman says.

Sheneman say he will not elborate on any motive to why Huckaby killed the 8 year old.

Huckaby has been booked in San Joaquin County jail, where she is currently being held.

Melissa Huckaby, 28, was arrested at 11:55 p.m. Friday, about five hours after she drove herself to the local police station at the request of officers, said police Sgt. Tony Sheneman.

"She gave enough information to us during the course of the interview that probable cause was there to arrest her," said Sheneman. No other arrests were made.

Huckaby is being held without bail at San Joaquin County Jail, and is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday, according to the county sheriff's website.

Sandra disappeared on March 27 and hundreds of volunteers and law enforcement officials turned out to search for her. Pictures of the girl with dark brown eyes and light brown hair were posted all over Tracy, a city of 78,000 people about 60 miles east of San Francisco.

On April 6, farmworkers draining an irrigation pond found the suitcase.

The slain girl's aunt, Angie Chavez, said in a phone interview with The Associated Press early Saturday that she was happy to learn of the arrest.

"I want to know why she did it, if she did it," Chavez said.

During an early morning news conference, Tracy Police Chief Janet Thiessen said investigators worked the case tirelessly in the hopes of finding Sandra.

"We have information that Sandra, by the time she was reported missing to us, that she probably had already been murdered," said Thiessen.

"It has helped us to bring Sandra home, again not in the way that we would've hoped, but that was out of our hands shortly after she went missing."

Police did not state how the girl allegedly was killed or the motive.

Huckaby had previously told The Tracy Press that Sandra visited her home on the day of her disappearance to play with her 5-year-old daughter. But Huckaby said she'd turned Sandra away because her daughter needed to pick up her toys and Sandra went to another friend's home. Huckaby also said she had left her suitcase in the driveway that day, and that it was missing.

The Tracy Press reported that Huckaby was released Thursday from Sutter Tracy Community Hospital, where she spent several days in intensive care for what she described as "internal bleeding."

Huckaby is a granddaughter of Pastor Clifford Lawless, whose Clover Road Baptist Church was the subject of a police search. Huckaby taught Sunday school at the church and lived with Lawless in the Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park that also was Sandra's home.

A phone call to Lawless was not immediately returned.

Huckaby's family had been questioned at length during the investigation, and their home and vehicles had been searched, Sheneman said.

Huckaby was scheduled to appear in court on April 17 to check in with a county mental health program as part of a three-year probation sentence for a petty theft charge to which she pleaded no contest.

In an interview with the newspaper on Friday, Huckaby said someone else by the same name was facing charges for the attempted November theft from Target.

TRACY — While investigators returned Friday to a church they'd already searched, a Tracy woman said publicly that the suitcase 8-year-old Sandra Cantu was found dead inside sounds like the one that had been stolen from her the same day the girl disappeared.

Melissa Huckaby, 28, told several media outlets Friday that the suitcase disappeared from her driveway in the Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park on March 27, the same day Sandra Cantu was reported missing.

Huckaby failed to return repeated calls for additional comment.

Huckaby said she had prepared the suitcase with items to be taken to Clover Road Baptist Church for a Sunday school class she teaches and had left the bag in the driveway of the mobile home she shares with her grandparents. She apparently had forgotten her keys and cell phone, and returned inside to look for them, but gave up after a short while before grabbing a spare set and driving to the church.

When Huckaby's grandmother called her to say she had found the missing items, she remembered the suitcase was still in the driveway, she said. She asked family members to check on it. It wasn't there.

She told the Tracy Press she meant to file a police report but never did. Some television stations are reporting that Huckaby said she filed a police report.

According to logs with the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office and the Tracy Police Department, no one reported a missing suitcase from the Orchard Park Mobile Home Estates or the Clover Road Baptist Church in the past three weeks.


Huckaby said Sandra had stopped by her house to play with her 5-year-old daughter, but she told Sandra the girl wasn't being allowed to have a friend over. She said Sandra then left to go to another friend's house.

The last images of Sandra, captured on a video surveillance camera set up by her grandparents, show the little girl skipping across the roadway toward her home before veering right and heading in another direction.

Sandra's body was found Monday, inside a large black suitcase discovered in a pond being drained, 10 days after the Jacobson Elementary School second-grader went missing.

A source close to the investigation said that at first glance there were no visible signs of trauma on the girl.

Huckaby's grandfather, Clifford Lane Lawless, who was in the media spotlight when FBI investigators searched the church earlier this week, is the pastor, but police have said he is not a suspect. The church was searched again around 4 p.m. Friday and several unidentified items were reportedly removed.

In an unrelated case, Huckaby pleaded no contest earlier this year to one count of theft with a prior conviction. She's expected to be sentenced Friday, according to court records.

It's also been reported that she was a patient at Sutter-Tracy Community Hospital earlier this week, and police reportedly were stationed there as well.

A public memorial service has been scheduled for Sandra. The service is scheduled for 1 p.m. Thursday in the gymnasium of West High School. The family is also planning a private service.

Fry Memorial Chapel, at 550 S. Central Ave., which is handling the arrangements, will be open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. this weekend to allow members of the public to express their sympathy and support in guest books that will later be given to the Cantu family.

The family has requested that gifts and letters no longer be left at the entrance to their mobile home park and would like to thank everyone for supporting them and honoring Sandra.

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - A teenage mother, her 23-month-old son and a 6-year-old boy were found shot to death in an apartment in a crime-ridden neighborhood near New Orleans early on Saturday, police officials said.

A fourth victim, an 11-year-old girl, underwent surgery for multiple gunshot wounds, said Colonel John Fortunato, a spokesman for the Jefferson Parish sheriff's office.

The two children were shot in the head.

Witnesses told police that two men opened fire after kicking in the door of the apartment in Terrytown, a suburb of New Orleans on the west bank of the Mississippi River.

Police responded to a 3:43 a.m. (4:43 a.m. EDT) report of gunshots and found Domonique Sterling, 19, lying on the floor in the living room with a gunshot wound to the back. Her toddler son, Robert Claiborne, and 6-year-old Four Overstreet were found in a bedroom.