SAN DIEGO » A toddler’s body was found stuffed into a duffel bag when a Los Angeles-area couple — not the girl’s parents — tried to cross the border from San Diego to Tijuana, authorities said today.

Investigators are trying to figure out who the child was, how she died and who her parents are, San Diego Police Homicide Lt. Ray Valentin said.

Johnny Lewis Hartley, 39, and Mercy Mary Becerra, 43, of Whittier were arrested after Mexican authorities made the discovery while screening the bag at a pedestrian crossing in San Ysidro before noon on Tuesday, Valentin said.

The man was carrying the duffel bag and Mexican authorities sent him to a secondary inspection area. There, officials put the bag through an X-ray machine and saw the small body, Valentin said.

Hartley was turned over to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, then to San Diego police homicide investigators. Valentin said when Hartley was detained, the woman ran off, but was caught a short time later and also detained. She, too, was handed over to U.S. authorities.

San Diego police investigators arrested them both on one count of murder, pending the outcome of an autopsy being conducted Wednesday. Valentin said the cause of death was not immediately obvious, but there was little chance she had died a natural death.

The San Diego County medical examiner’s office was conducting the autopsy.

Valentin said the San Diego County district attorney’s office advised his investigators to arrest Hartley and Becerra in San Diego until authorities decide who will have jurisdiction over the case, based on where any crime occurred. San Diego and Whittier police are working the case together, he said.

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©2016 The San Diego Union-Tribune