The staff at Gz2Gentz Barbershop in south Edmonton are still reeling and trying to come to grips after one of their clients found a dead baby lying in the snowy parking lot on Saturday afternoon.
“It’s heartbreaking. I feel so sad.. How could someone leave a baby like that?” said Leo Cerbes, the shop’s co-owner, in a phone interview with Postmedia on Tuesday afternoon.
Cerbes said he opens the barber shop every morning at 10 a.m. and didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary when he arrived Saturday morning to work. It wasn’t until roughly 2 p.m. when a customer came into the store and notified one of the other barbers about discovering a dead baby in a box near their vehicle after they left the barbershop.
Police officers responded to the scene at 2:15 p.m. and found the baby in the parking lot of the shopping complex near Parsons Road SW and Ellerslie Road SW.
“At first, I was trying to focus on cutting my customer’s hair, and then one of our barbers came back from outside after seeing emergency medical services, and that’s when they told me about the baby,” said Darell John Embalzado, who works as a barber in the shop.
“I have two kids. It’s really hard to hear something like that. It’s awful.“
Embalzado said he and another barber stayed inside the shop to help clients while the rest of the staff did what they could to help investigators with any questions.
Embalzado said he heard from clients that the infant was frozen and face down when he was found.
“I’m human. You hear about something like this happening in the news, but you never think something like this would happen in our area. I feel so bad for that baby,” said Embalzado.
Police have yet to release more information about the baby’s death. In an email on Tuesday, to Edmonton Police Service spokeswoman Carolin Maran said a plea to the community has generated a number of tips.
“I can confirm that we have received many tips from the public that have been quite useful. We are aiming to provide an update on this investigation later this week,” said Maran.
Police are hoping to gather dashcam footage from the area between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. Saturday. Anyone with information is asked to contact police at 780-423-4567 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
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