LOCAL : Garden Grove Teens Find Corpse
A group of teen-agers walking to high school this morning discovered a corpse wrapped in a maroon carpet across the street from Riverdale Elementary School.
“I was just walking around, joking around, you know, and I nudged it with my foot,” said Victor Maldonado, 14, from Santa Ana. “It felt like Jell-O. We knew it wasn’t just carpet.”
Police believe the corpse, which has not been identified, was dumped in the quiet, residential neighborhood overnight, said Garden Grove Police Detective Ron Shave.
The body may be that of a young, “small-structured woman,” Shave said. It was discovered at 7:43 a.m. on Lewis Street south of Downie Place.
“We hope it’s an accident,” Shave said. “We think it might be an overdose. Often, the (drug users) will not know what to do with a victim and just dump it. That’s not uncommon.”
Five psychologists were called in to “talk to students and quell any rumors” at Riverdale Elementary where children could be heard on the playground nearby as coroner’s officials loaded the body into the station wagon.
Alan Trudell, spokesman for the Garden Grove Unified School District, said a letter will be sent home with students today to inform parents of what happened and provide phone numbers for counseling if necessary.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
