Police were still searching Thursday for the person who sexually assaulted and killed an 11-year-old girl before stuffing the girl’s body under her bed at the family’s suburban Houston apartment.
Police in Pasadena, a suburb of Houston, said Maria Gonzalez was home alone around 10 a.m. Saturday when someone knocked on the door.
The girl sent a text message to her father, Carmelo González, 32, who had just left for work.
In an interview with the KHOU radio station, Carmelo González stated that he told his daughter not to open the front door. María González told her that she would not do it and that she would stay in her bed. Carmelo González indicated that it was the last communication he received from his daughter.
“I kept calling and calling and she wasn’t answering,” he told KHOU. During her break around 1:00 p.m., Carmelo González asked her brother and sister-in-law, who live in the same apartment complex, to check on her daughter, Pasadena Police Chief Josh said. Bruegger, to reporters during a news conference on Tuesday.
The girl’s aunt and uncle found the front door open and when they entered the house they saw that some things were out of place. They searched for the girl but could not find her, Bruegger said.
Her aunt and uncle began searching the apartment complex for her. When Carmelo González returned to her house around 3 pm, he searched the apartment and found his daughter under her bed. She told KHOU that her body was wrapped in a garbage bag and placed inside a laundry basket. Police revealed that the girl was strangled to death.
Bruegger said the girl was sexually assaulted. She added that investigators do not currently have a suspect and that they ruled out the girl’s father as one after checking her alibi.
