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SYDNEY - A woman has been charged with murder over the death of a two-year-old boy whose body was found in a suitcase in a pond in Sydney's south-west.
Residents hurled abuse at the woman who was questioned yesterday over the death of the toddler.
The 26-year-old woman was arrested yesterday afternoon and questioned at Campbelltown Police Station before being charged overnight.
She was refused bail and will appear in Parramatta Bail Court today.
A 29-year-old man was also arrested yesterday and questioned by police, but has since been released pending further inquiries.
The 26-year-old was escorted under police guard to Mandurama Reserve, at Ambarvale, about 9.30pm last night to tour the scene where the two-year-old boy was found stuffed in a tartan suitcase dumped in a pond.
Two boys made the gruesome discovering on Wednesday after fishing the case out of the water.
Hundreds of residents flocked to the scene early in the evening yesterday in an impromptu memorial, many leaving candles and flowers to honour the dead boy.
Later, an unmarked police car that had left the police station with a person in the back seat, believed to be the woman and covered by a dark sheet, arrived at the reserve.
Police erected barriers at either end of the road running alongside the pond and tarpaulins across the park to prevent residents seeing the woman and officers as they walked the area.
Residents got no closer than 100 metres but yelled obscenities and abuse at the woman and later charged the car as it exited one of the road blocks.
Police said that while they now knew the identity of the two-year-old boy but they would not release the name.
Nor would they confirm reports that the woman being questioned was the dead boy's mother.
Earlier yesterday, residents spoke of their shock.
"It's very frightening, it's very scary," Tanya Mathis told Network Ten.
"Especially 'cause all of us in this street had kids and all our kids are out playing, you know."
The family had not been seen since Monday, she told Channel Nine.
Another woman said everyone was stunned.
"We're quite shocked, quite shocked," the woman told ABC Television.
"I've been living here for 15 years and I've never heard anything like this before.
Greg Maffy said his son used to go over to dead boy's house.
But, he told Network Ten, "he hasn't seen the little boy for, like, three weeks".
Leonard Murphy said he lived near the boy's grandmother in Claymore.
She'd packed up and left "without saying a word to anybody in the neighbourhood at all," he told Network Ten.
A young man said some people hoped to find the boy's killer before police did.
Police yesterday raided a house at nearby Rosemeadow.
Officers also knocked on doors and interviewed local residents.
Forensic testing is still being conducted on the boy's body to determine the cause of death.
- AAP
