Missing Girl Found Dead in Riverbed

The body of 9-year-old Patricia Lopez, the Santa Ana third-grader who had been missing for three days, was found Friday morning by a group of children playing in the dry bed of the Santa Ana River.

Santa Ana Police Lt. Bob Chavez said “there was trauma” to the body that could have been the result of a beating with several blunt objects found nearby. He declined to describe the objects or to say which part of the body had been struck.

He said there were no signs of sexual molestation. An autopsy will be performed.

Chavez said there are no suspects, but he did not rule out the possibility that the killing was gang-related. Patricia’s brother, 19-year-old Hector Lopez, was grazed on the forehead by a bullet in what police said was a gang-related shooting Feb. 8 in Santa Ana.

Asked about the family’s involvement in that case, Jennie Hernandez, Patricia’s aunt, said Friday: “You’re asking questions we can’t answer.”

‘We Have No Evidence’

Said Chavez: “We are naturally aware that her brother had been the victim of a gang-related incident. However, we have no evidence” to indicate that Patricia’s death stemmed from that incident.

“It will be investigated and looked at, naturally,” he said.

Ten children found the fully clothed body at 9:45 a.m. in a drain pipe that empties into a storm drain channel about two miles from Monte Vista Elementary School. Patricia was last seen alive by a teacher at the school about 2:50 p.m. Wednesday.

A helicopter had flown over the riverbed Thursday during an intensive door-to-door search by 35 police officers and about 25 volunteers from the Orange County Search and Rescue Team, but the pipe where the body was found is not visible from the air or from the street.

Chavez said the children who found the body immediately flagged down a flood control worker, who contacted police. The youngsters were interviewed at the Santa Ana Police Department and then taken home, he said.

Patricia normally met her mother after school at the corner of Center Street and McFadden Avenue, about a block from the school gate and within seven blocks of the family home. But the mother, Modesta Lopez, was a few minutes late Wednesday, and when she did not see her daughter she went home to look for her.

Unable to find the girl, the mother and her children searched the neighborhood. After four hours, the family called police.

Hector Lopez said Thursday that he and his family “went walking all over the neighborhood during the night. We didn’t stop until 4 a.m. Then we got up around 7 a.m. and still went knocking on doors.”