BALTIMORE — On May 12th, police answered a call for a suspicious bag found in a shopping cart next to a dumpster at the Clarks Lane Garden Apartments in Northwest Baltimore.
“They happened to look over and they said they seen a cart sitting there with body parts in it,” a resident, Kevin Hueitt, told us at the time.
A torso of a body missing its hands, legs and head.
Police released the image of a tattoo that one of Dominique Foster’s children living in the Carolina's recognized, which led to her identification.
Surveillance video and other evidence pointed to her father, 66-year-old Lawrence Banks, as the killer.
The two had been living together at the nearby Bristol House Apartments in what investigators discovered had been a sexual relationship.
"Living in fear for all this time, we need to make sure that her funeral is not a dumpster," a woman told friends and family members at a vigil for Foster where emotions ran high.
"I don't care what kind of life she was living,” another woman told those who had gathered, “She still was a human being."
Police picked up Banks on gun charges, but Foster’s death brought back decades-old memories of him killing her brother as well.
“It’s too much. It’s too much, and he discarded her like trash and she was beautiful,” said Arlene Lawson, one of Foster’s high school friends, “Her brother was beautiful. They were so sweet. That’s what I remember.”
The family had long suspected Banks of killing their mother as well, although police never found enough evidence to charge him in her death.
This week’s charges may finally end a long history of fear, abuse and even death tied to the family’s patriarch.
“That monster has to stay where he is... in jail,” said Lawson.
Dominique Foster left behind six children and a host of other extended family members who still live in and around Baltimore.
