Girl Entombed in Concrete : Crime: How and why the 8-year-old was killed is not known. An aunt and a cousin have been arrested on suspicion of murder.

The body of an 8-year-old girl has been found entombed in a trash can filled with concrete behind a home in South-Central Los Angeles, and her aunt and cousin have been arrested on suspicion of murder, police said Thursday.

Whether Latoya Harris was alive when concrete was poured over her has yet to be determined, said Detective Eric Campos of the Los Angeles Police Department. He said how and why the girl was slain are not known.

Campos said an informant, whom police declined to identify, called the department’s Rampart station Tuesday night and said a girl’s body could be found in a concrete-filled container in the back yard of a home in the 100 block of East 47th Street.

“When we got there, all you could see was the cement,” Campos said. “It took a little while to chip the concrete away. . . . The first thing I saw was a little piece of clothing.”

Campos said it took about two hours to free the girl’s body from the concrete.

In the meantime, he said, officers questioned the girl’s aunt, Maddie Moore, 43, who had been caring for the girl for four years and who had been living in the comfortable, old two-story house on 47th Street with her four children and Latoya for two months.

Campos said conflicting statements by the woman and her 21-year-old son, Maurice, led to their arrests. He would not say if they had admitted killing the girl or if there was evidence of child abuse.

“They showed no remorse” about the death, the detective said. “They did nothing to tell that they were sorry.”

The detective said the girl apparently had been dead for about a week. He said someone had poured concrete into the bottom of the plastic, 30-gallon trash can, placed Latoya inside, and poured more concrete on top of her. Within a day, the concrete hardened, The trash can was under an avocado tree in a corner of the spacious, barren back yard.

“A few days ago, we noticed a very bad smell,” said Anna Llamas, 16, who lives with her family in an apartment house next door to the Moore residence. “We thought maybe it was something they had sprayed on the grass. We didn’t know what it was.”

Campos would not say how the informant who called police had known the girl’s body was in the trash can.

The detective said Latoya’s mother, Maddie Moore’s sister, had turned the girl over to Moore to take care of when Latoya was about 4 years old.

“We don’t know the reason why,” Campos said. “The mother has not yet been found, and we have not talked to the girl’s father.”

Police did not reveal the identity of Latoya’s parents, other than to say the mother was believed to be a “street person.”

About two months ago, Campos said, Latoya, Maurice Moore, Maddie Moore and her three other children--a 14-year-old girl, a 7-year-old girl and a 5-year-old boy--moved into the rented house.

Neighbors said they had seen children playing in the back yard, but none of them had seen or heard anything unusual.

Neither Maddie nor Maurice Moore is known to have a police record, Campos said. The three children have been placed in foster homes, authorities said.