Police Stymied in Efforts to Identify Girl
Police and social workers have been trying vainly for two days to identify or communicate with a teen-age girl found wandering barefoot on a Downey street, police said Thursday.
The girl, who is being held at MacLaren Children’s Center in the custody of the county Bureau of Child Services, has not responded to attempts to question her in English, Spanish or sign language, and police believe she might be autistic, said Detective Capt. Jim Shade, of the Downey Police Department.
“She just lies in her room in a fetal position most of the time, but occasionally she pulls her hair and screams,” Shade said. “We have not been able to communicate with her at all, and we have found nothing on her to help us to identify her.”
The girl, who is about 13 to 15 years old, does not appear to have been injured or molested in any way, Shade said. She is 4 feet, 3 inches tall, weighs about 95 pounds, and has brown eyes and long brown hair. When she was found, she was wearing a dark blue pullover sweater, light blue corduroy trousers and was barefooted, Shade said.
Downey police found her at 8 p.m. Tuesday after receiving a report that a young girl was wandering on Wiley Burk Avenue.
Downey police issued a bulletin to law enforcement agencies in Southern California, but have received no response.
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