Burned Body of Slain Girl Is Identified

Kwong Fan said Tuesday that he knew his 16-year-old daughter, Amanda, was in the wrong crowd. He even moved the family from Torrance into a posh Redondo Beach townhouse to get her away from it.

He and her mother warned Amanda to be careful. But she assured him, he recalled, “I’m not stupid, Daddy. I can take care of myself.”

Apparently she couldn’t. Authorities have identified a body found Friday at Veterans Park and Sports Complex in Carson as Amanda’s.

She had been stabbed and her body so badly burned that even Tuesday the coroner’s office was withholding official identification pending examination of dental records. Spokesman Scott Carrier said officials are 99% certain the victim was Amanda.

Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore said Sean Thomas Blazer, 20, of Carson has been arrested on suspicion of murder and arson and is scheduled to be charged today.

Whitmore said Blazer was picked up after the killing Friday on suspicion of a separate assault.

Kwong Fan, weeping, described his daughter as strong-willed.

“We tried our best, but she had these strong feelings she wanted to live her way,” he said. “She didn’t understand this could be a danger to her life.

“She was such a lovely child, so clever. She just fell in with the wrong group.”

His daughter, he said, had been trying to restore relations between a friend and the friend’s mother. Fan said his daughter, who did not drive, had been taking buses to Carson, several miles east of Redondo Beach, to mediate the dispute.

Friends and investigators have told him it was while doing this that Amanda met the suspect. Authorities have not stated a motive for the killing.

At the bottom of a park loading dock Tuesday, there were still burn marks where the body had been found, and an impromptu memorial of flowers and messages left by Amanda’s friends.

“No longer can we say that things like this don’t happen in Carson,” said one message. “Let us not let this little girl’s death be in vain.”

“I will always miss you and I will never forget the good times that we shared together, all the crazy things we used to do and say,” wrote a friend.

Amanda was one of several Los Angeles County teenagers killed or injured in recent violence.

Another victim was Sergio Ruiz, 15, of Baldwin Park. He was standing by his bicycle talking to a friend Monday when a vehicle drove up with two people inside. An argument ensued, and deputies were told that Ruiz was shot as the vehicle drove away. He died at a hospital.

Later Monday, a 15-year-old boy died after a drive-by shooting in front of a South Los Angeles house. Two 18-year-olds were wounded in the same shooting.