Body of pregnant teen found in landfill
Thursday, August 05, 2010
This image provided by the Fontana Police Department shows a Sheriff's Department official working with a cadaver-sniffing dog at the El Sobrante landfill in Corona, Calif., where the remains of a missing pregnant teenager, Anyssia Escamilla, 17, were found in this landfill Aug. 4, 2010.(AP Photo/Fontana Police Department)
LOS ANGELES -- The remains of a pregnant teenager were found in a landfill after months of searching through mountains of trash, authorities said Thursday.
Anyssia Escamilla, 17, disappeared in May. Shortly afterward, her 18-year-old boyfriend Jesus Avitia Jr. was charged with her death.
A cadaver-sniffing dog found the body Wednesday evening, and Escamilla's identity was confirmed through her dental records.
Escamilla, the mother of a 3-year-old son from another relationship, was reported missing on May 11 when she failed to return home from Bloomington High School, about 50 miles east of Los Angeles.
Police said Avitia told investigators he killed Escamilla and put her in the trash after learning she was pregnant and refused to have an abortion. He wanted to follow in his mother's footsteps and pursue a nursing career but was afraid a baby would derail his plans, Fontana police Detective Shawn Hare said.
The search for the body was narrowed to an area about the size of two football fields at a dump in Corona after the manager told police the general location where trash was dumped in the days after Escamilla's death.
"It was not pleasant," Hare said. "When you left there everyday, you never went into the house. You shed off your clothes in the garage and you would spray them down before you went in."
Avitia remained jailed on $2 million bail. He has pleaded not guilty to murdering Escamilla and her 3-month-old fetus. Prosecutors have not decided whether to seek the death penalty.
Escamilla's family said Avitia's family didn't approve of him seeing a girl who already had a child from another relationship. Her parents have said the two had been dating for about a year.
A final autopsy for Escamilla's body was pending.
Hare said the body was in a partially mummified state and missing its legs, which were believed to have been severed by a mechanical digger at the dump.
(Copyright ©2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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