Crowds Gather to See ‘Image’ of Slain Girl, 9

The Continis have no doubt.

“It’s a miracle,” Theodora Contini said, as she and her husband fixed their sights on the fuzzy shape on an old billboard above Beyer Boulevard in Chula Vista. “I see it. A miracle.”

Not convinced was Vernisha Pepp.

“There’s nothing up there,” Pepp, who professes to believe in the supernatural, insisted. “I just came from happy hour, and I know. There’s nothing up there.”

They were among more than 1,000 onlookers who descended on the area Thursday in vehicles and on foot to see what some say is the restful countenance of the late Laura Arroyo--a 9-year-old girl, who was abducted from her South San Diego home last month and murdered.

The “vision” underscores the fervent emotion surrounding the killing of the girl, who disappeared the night of June 19 after answering a ring at the front door. The third-grader’s fully clothed body was found the next day in Chula Vista. She had been stabbed and beaten, an autopsy showed.

“The frustrating part is that she just disappeared without a sign,” Chula Vista Police Lt. Merlin Wilson said. “We don’t have a motive” and there are no known suspects.

Seeking a logical explanation for the image, Wilson and others say it is probably the result of shadows and artificial lighting cast upon the billboard, which has been covered by white paint since mid-January.

“Maybe God is sending a message that people should stop doing evil things,” said Esperanza Villarreal of San Diego, who brought her six grandchildren.

“I guess with the coating effect, and the way the light hits the shadows there, people have come up with this image there that has expanded with everyone’s imagination,” said Frank Sanchez, general manager of Martin Outdoor Advertising, the San Diego firm that owns the billboard.

Previously, Sanchez said, the billboard featured an ad for a food market. He and others initially speculated that the pictorial from the previous display--a plateful of food and some ad copy--may have bled through the paint. But Sanchez checked and nothing in the ad resembled a girl’s likeness.

“When I first heard about it, I didn’t believe it,” the victim’s mother, Laura Alicia Mendoza de Arroyo, said of the billboard. “I thought it was lies.”

Curious, the family drove to the site Wednesday evening. “I felt sure it was my daughter,” Mrs. Arroyo said Thursday. “It looked like she was lying down, asleep.”

“I think she wants to tell us something,” added Mrs. Arroyo, noting that her husband, Luis, passes by the billboard on his way to work at a tow truck company. “Maybe she wants to help us find who did it. To press for justice.”