Girl, 8, Slain, Set Afire in Park, Police Say

Three months ago, Alba Susanna Flores came from El Salvador to join her mother here. She was a tiny, 8-year-old girl who spoke no English, a neighbor said, and so shy she would not even talk to the little girl her own age next door.

When they found her dead in a park Thursday morning, a dozen hours after she told her sister she was going to buy ice cream, her body had been so badly burned that at first investigators could not even tell her sex.

Police said Friday they have identified the girl found in Alma Park in San Pedro as Alba Flores. Her family told police she had left their USC-area home Wednesday evening, and police suspected that the body might be hers, said Los Angeles Police Department spokesman Lt. Fred Nixon.

An autopsy Friday revealed that the girl had died of “multiple injuries,” and not by burning, as police had suspected. “She was set afire afterward,” said coroner’s spokesman Bob Dambacher. “We can’t say how long she was dead when she was burned.”

Authorities declined to describe the nature of wounds that killed the 4-foot-tall, 50-pound girl. “We have no suspects at this time,” Nixon said.

She lived on West 24th Street with her mother, whom a neighbor identified as Angelica Ramos, a younger sister and brother, the mother’s companion and his brother, a neighbor said.

The little girl left the house, a small California bungalow divided into two apartments, at about 7 p.m. Wednesday. “She told her younger sister she was going out to buy some ice cream,” Nixon said.

Her mother awoke from a nap at about 11 p.m. to find Alba missing. She summoned police later that night, Nixon said.

At 6:30 a.m. the next day, a child walking through Alma Park discovered the burned body lying curled into a fetal position near a storage shed.

Police said they have no evidence to suggest where the girl was killed, although they said they believe the body was set afire in the park.

The child had been brought from El Salvador three months ago, neighbor Jose Cortez, 38, said, and had not yet been sent to school. “She was a very shy little girl,” he said. She hardly ever talks,” even to Cortez’s own two young daughters.