2 Schools Try to Cope With Girl’s Death

Investigators continued their search for clues Tuesday to learn how 9-year-old Amanda Leigh Gaeke died and who may have killed her, while crisis counselors descended on two San Diego schools to console teachers, students and parents overcome with grief by the child’s death.

The fourth-grader’s nude and decomposed body was found Monday, 11 days after she disappeared from her North Park home. The body was dumped in a brushy canyon 5 blocks south of Amanda’s Landis Street home and three blocks west of McKinley Elementary School, where she was a student.

Authorities believe Amanda is the third 9-year-old girl to have been abducted in San Diego in the past four months. Two of the girls were found dead, and the third is missing.

Although police say they have no evidence linking the cases, some counselors say the disappearances have made many parents anxious and touched off community-wide fears that children aren’t safe in any neighborhood.

“It’s almost like losing a sense of being secure, and having it brought into focus that bad things really do happen to children, and bad things really do happen to adults,” said Barbara Ryan, a social worker at Children’s Hospital.

A neighbor discovered Amanda’s body in a clump of eucalyptus trees when he investigated an odor that was first noticed last week. The tragic discovery ended a nearly two-week search by North Park residents who went door-to-door with flyers that included a photo of the missing girl.

Investigators at the county medical examiner’s office said Tuesday that an autopsy was still pending. They said additional laboratory tests are needed, but did not know when the results will be available.

Meanwhile, counselors from the San Diego Unified School District’s crisis intervention team continued to help those shaken by Amanda’s death.

At Wegeforth Elementary School in Linda Vista, where Amanda was a student last year, children, parents and teachers wept openly on playgrounds and in staff rooms at the news that the missing girl had been found dead.

Teams of crisis counselors were sent in to cope with childrens’ fears and adult grief at both Wegeforth and McKinley elementary, where Amanda was a fourth-grader at the time of her death, school officials said.

Created after the 1978 PSA jetliner crash in North Park and a 1979 shooting at Cleveland Elementary School, the crisis teams have been in city schools after teacher deaths, suicides and, most recently, during the Persian Gulf War.

At Wegeforth, children wrote goodby letters to their departed friend and acted out her “rescue” with puppets, said Leah Edzant, one of the crisis counselors who spent the day handling the trauma of the youngster’s death.

“Dear Amanda, I’m so sorry that you’re gone,” one child wrote. “I’m also sorry for being mean to you right before you left. You’re nice. (We’re) going to miss you very much. We love you. I’m sorry you had to go away, but I’m glad that you’re with Jesus.

“Can you also say hi to God, and tell him that I love him. I’m pretty sure that I will see you in heaven when I die.”

Another wrote, “Dear Amanda’s parents: I know you must be sad because Amanda died. I wish I got a chance to say good buy (sic).”

Edzant toured classrooms at the school, fielding children’s questions about how the death occurred, whether it could happen to them and why Amanda was gone, Edzant said. Other school district counselors took parents’ phone calls about how to discuss the death with their own children, said Norma Trost, spokesman for the school district.

Counselors told children that “it’s OK to be scared and to feel angry. It’s normal to have these feelings, and that’s why we’re talking about them now, so they don’t get pushed inside,” Edzant said.

Children and staff members were seen in smaller groups at a crisis center in the school, where children used large puppets to act out Amanda’s abduction and change the ending. In one exercise, a child had Amanda’s mother rescue her.

Overwhelmed youngsters “feel powerful” by altering the details of Amanda’s abduction, Edzant said. “They get to feel better.”

The crisis team also met with students at McKinley and their parents. As expected, many students were disturbed by Amanda’s death, especially classmates. But Principal Barbara J. Bethel said some parents also expressed fears for their children’s safety and had to be counseled.

“We (crisis team) spent a lot of time in Amanda’s classroom. . . . We also provided for the parents, who were concerned about how they should talk about Amanda’s death with their children,” Bethel said.

She said that the crisis team counseled 30 to 40 parents and has scheduled two more meetings today to talk to the parents.

Police said Amanda disappeared Oct. 3, after she had arrived home from school. A classmate told police that she saw Amanda sitting in a pickup truck with a Latino man after a school open house. The man was described as having a ponytail and wearing sunglasses.

According to a police report, the girl’s grandmother talked to her on the telephone at about 7:30 p.m. but did not detect anything amiss. Marlene Przybylak, Amanda’s mother, arrived home about 15 minutes later, and the girl was gone. The girl’s bicycle was also missing and has not been recovered.

Amanda was the third 9-year-old girl that police believe has been abducted in San Diego in the past four months. Two of the girls were killed, and the third is still missing.

The recent disappearances began on June 19, when Laura Arroyo ran down the stairs of her family’s San Ysidro condominium to answer a nighttime knock at the front door. Her body was found the next morning, barefoot and still dressed for bed, on the sidewalk of a Chula Vista industrial complex.

Police said that Laura was beaten and stabbed. There have been no arrests in the case, and Chula Vista detectives said the investigation is continuing. Investigators have declined to say whether she was molested.

On July 15, Rasheeyda Wilson disappeared a block from her home on F Street in downtown San Diego. San Diego police said tipsters have told investigators that Rasheeyda might be in Mexico, but added that there are no suspects in the case.

Despite the similarities in the three cases--each child was 9 years old at the time of her disappearance and each was a fourth-grader--investigators do not believe the cases are related.

“At this time there are no real glaring similarities, aside from the same age. All of the disappearances occurred in areas that are far separated from each other,” said San Diego Police Lt. Paul Ybarrondo.

However, Ybarrondo emphasized that the investigation of Amanda’s death is just getting started and added that homicide investigators are not discounting anything. San Diego police investigators plan to meet with Chula Vista homicide detectives in the coming days to compare notes on Amanda’s and Laura’s killings.

Experts in child killings say that Laura’s and Amanda’s killers were probably Latino or white child molesters. Rarely do black child molesters kill white or Latino children, they said.

“It’s not unusual for child molesters, specifically Caucasian or Latino, to cross over (to each other’s ethnic group). But it’s not real common for Caucasian or Latino child molesters to seek out black victims. It’s happened but certainly not the norm,” said San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Sgt. Toby Tyler, a nationally recognized expert on crimes against children.

On the other hand, black child molesters usually target victims from their own ethnic group, Tyler added.

“They (black molesters) obviously run a much higher risk by targeting victims in Caucasian and Latino neighborhoods,” Tyler said.

During their investigation of Amanda’s disappearance, San Diego police interviewed known sex offenders who live in North Park or near McKinley school.

The string of child abductions and slayings in the county also include Leticia Hernandez, who disappeared from the yard of her Oceanside home in December, 1989. Her disappearance sparked a nationwide search for her and her abductors, but the hunt ended last March when her remains were found near Valley Center. Investigators have not determined her cause of death.

Ryan, the Children’s Hospital social worker, said the discovery of Amanda’s body is almost certain to heighten anxieties throughout San Diego communities that may have felt protected from brutal street crime before such incidents.

“People start thinking about how these cases fit together, if in fact they do,” said Ryan, supervisor of mental health treatment programs at the hospital’s Center for Child Protection.

Ryan speculated that members of Amanda’s community, and even others who did not know her, might experience some emotions of “grieving cycle,” including denial, anger, depression and bargaining before accepting the deaths over time.

“People will say: ‘What’s happening to us here as a community?’ ” she said. “ ‘Who would do these kinds of things to children?’ ”