Santa Ana Girl’s Body Found in Griffith Park : Classmates Say She Entered Car on Way Home From School; Strangled, Molested, Police Report

The body of a 9-year-old Santa Ana girl was found stuffed in a trash can near the Griffith Park Observatory in Los Angeles Tuesday, 11 hours after she had been abducted on her way home from school.

Authorities identified the girl as Nadia Puente, a fourth-grader at Diamond Elementary School in Santa Ana. They said she had been sexually molested and strangled.

Nadia’s parents, Armando and Sara Puente, reported her missing at 5:30 p.m. Monday, and Santa Ana police launched an all-night, house-to-house search of the neighborhood, using police dogs, bloodhounds and helicopters.

Abducted Near Home

The abduction took place little more than half a mile from where another 9-year-old-girl, Patricia Lopez, failed to meet her mother after leaving Monte Vista Elementary School in June, 1987. She was later found dead in a drain pipe that empties into the Santa Ana River. Police said no suspect has been arrested in the Lopez case.

Investigators said they doubted that the two cases are related. “We’re not ruling it out, but it appears highly unlikely,” Santa Ana police spokeswoman Maureen Thomas said.

Santa Ana officers said Tuesday that they located two Diamond School students who said they saw a small, gray car with a black stripe along the sides stop and a man inside call to Nadia in English. The students told police that Nadia got in and that the car drove off at about 2:10 p.m. Monday.

There was no indication that she was pulled into the car, but the man may have coerced her with a weapon or by some other means, police said.

They described the man as a Latino in his early-to-mid-30s with a goatee and short, curly hair.

At 1 a.m. Tuesday, as police continued their search in Santa Ana, a transient collecting discarded cans for recycling told Los Angeles police that he had found a girl’s body in a trash can on Observatory Road in Griffith Park.

The body was clothed in a black-and-white blouse, a black skirt and white sneakers--the same clothing Nadia had been wearing. She was already dead when she was crammed into the 30-gallon trash can in a fetal position, police said.

To preserve evidence, the body was taken to the Los Angeles County coroner’s office in the trash can. Dental records and the family’s identification of the clothing confirmed that the body was Nadia’s, police said.

Police continued checking a 10-mile circle around the girl’s Santa Ana neighborhood and set up roadblocks at Greenville and Pomona streets, the intersection where Nadia was abducted, hoping to find witnesses.

A bilingual hot line was opened, and police asked anyone with information that might help in the investigation to call at any hour. The hot-line number is (714) 647-5495.

Jean Talarico, assistant principal of Diamond school, said security guards were called Tuesday to keep the curious off campus. Before school began, the faculty was briefed on how to answer students’ questions about the missing girl.

The school sent letters home with students, urging parents to listen to their children’s concerns. Four school psychologists were assigned to the school throughout the rest of this week to offer counseling to parents and children, Talarico said.

Talarico was on the Monte Vista school faculty when Patricia Lopez was murdered. Based on that experience, she said she expected that families would begin to react today, possibly accompanying their children to and from school and seeking counseling.

At the Puente home, more than 30 family members gathered to comfort Nadia’s parents. While most gathered inside the pale green house about three blocks from the school, others sat on the front lawn sobbing.

Nadia’s mother, Sara, 27, said she was “suffering and praying that they’ll get whoever did this to my daughter.”

“(The murderer) destroyed my life by taking her away; she was everything in this house,” the mother said of her eldest child and only daughter.

She said that her husband, Armando, 31, was “heartbroken” and that a doctor had given them sedatives to help calm their nerves. Relatives said a priest also had come to console the family.

Crying softly as she spoke, Sara Puente said she wanted to share her pain with other mothers so they would “watch out for their kids.”

“No matter what you do, no matter what you think you can do, there is always danger in the streets,” she said. “No matter how you teach your daughter, there’s always some psycho out there.”

Puente said her daughter was a smart, friendly and energetic girl. “She wanted to be a teacher or a writer when she grew up.”

Relatives and neighbors spoke glowingly of Nadia, whom a school official had described as a good student, a student council member and “just a fine young girl, very well thought of.”

One of Nadia’s cousins, 19-year-old Marcella Anaya, said Nadia was extraordinarily responsible for her age. She routinely cared for her four younger brothers, ages 1 to 8, and had marked on her calendar specific days and times in March to spend with her mother.

“She just wanted to get closer to her mom,” Anaya said.

Anaya and about 15 relatives had searched for Nadia at the Santa Ana River and nearby Centennial Regional Park on Monday. She said the incident was strange because Nadia had been taught by her mother and teachers to beware of strangers. “She (knew) not to get into a car with someone she doesn’t know,” Anaya added.

Police said Nadia’s murder and that of Patricia Lopez differed in significant ways. There was no evidence that Patricia Lopez was abducted; in fact, witnesses told police she was seen alive and alone near the riverbed where her body was found.

Patricia was killed with blows to the head from a blunt object, while Nadia was manually strangled, police said.

Staff writer Eric Malnic in Los Angeles contributed to this story.