Posted on 05/30/2002 5:21:17 AM PDT by MeekOneGOP
Parents can't believe children's deaths last year were homicides
Mourning without answers
05/30/2002
The brightly painted house on North Cliff Street still looks like a home where children might play. Holiday decorations hang from the green walls and the yard overflows with flower gardens and lawn art.
German Tovar and his wife, Martha Avitia, leave for work every day and return to their east Oak Cliff home. But for a year, they have been coming home to an empty house after the couple's two children were found slain a year ago in a shallow above-ground pool in the back yard.
The cases remain unsolved.
Investigators say someone killed the children 12-year-old German "Alex" Tovar and his sister, 7-year-old Maira Avitia and left their bodies underneath a tarp on the pool behind the house. Autopsy results showed that Maira had been sexually assaulted within a week of her death.
"I remember it every day when I go outside," Ms. Avitia said. "I ask myself: 'What happened? What happened?' "
Ms. Avitia said she is planning to have a Mass in her home to observe Thursday's anniversary, as she did on the children's birthdays after their deaths. The house will be open to friends, neighbors and children who played with Maira and Alex.
Despite conclusions by police and medical investigators that the children were killed and that her daughter had been abused, Ms. Avitia said, she and her husband think the deaths were accidental. She was alone with the children that evening when she found their bodies, and the family was packing to leave on a trip to Houston that evening.
"We think it was an accident, but I don't know, the police say maybe it was a homicide," she said. "I don't know what happened."
Ms. Avitia last saw her children on the evening of May 30, when she told them to go to the back yard and place a vinyl cover over the swimming pool in preparation for their trip. Next-door neighbor and family friend Betty Trevino said the two families had gone to dinner together earlier in the afternoon, and Ms. Avitia called her house that evening when she couldn't find the children, thinking they might have gone over to visit.
Ms. Avitia went in the back yard and spotted Alex's leg underneath the crumpled tarp in the water. She pulled them out of the water and called for help.
Rescue workers immediately doubted that the children had drowned because they found no water in their lungs as cardiopulmonary resuscitation was administered. Medical investigators ruled that that the deaths were homicides, but an exact cause of death has not been disclosed.
The brother and sister were among 21 children who were victims of homicide last year in Dallas County. Only a few cases remain unsolved, including the slayings of three children in drive-by shootings.
Detectives in the Police Department's youth division investigated the slayings because the victims were children, and as time passed they also conferred with Dallas homicide investigators. Witnesses have cooperated, said Deputy Chief Alfredo Saldana, who heads the youth division.
"It's been one of our most frustrating cases," he said. "We just haven't been able to solve it at this time."
Investigators said there is no evidence that a stranger killed the children. Police gave polygraph tests to Mr. and Ms. Avitia but have declined to discuss the results or other aspects of the investigation.
A year later, neighbors are unsure what to think. Some agree that it's unlikely that the children could drown in the small pool with just 28 inches of water. Alex was the most decorated Boy Scout in his troop, and both children knew how to swim.
Ms. Trevino said she worries about her children in the neighborhood, where prostitutes and drug dealers openly conduct business just down the street. Her son, Cesar, was close friends with Alex, and had invited him to sleep over the night before he died.
"I've changed," she said. "I'm worried for my kids. I'm afraid. It's weird."
E-mail rtharp@dallasnews.com
What do you say our INS goes through that neighborhood and starts finding out? Isn't that their job? What is wrong with having local law enforcement check papers, BTW?
A pity we can't send them home for interrogation by the Mexican police. You know, the ones who use stolen US vehicles as their squad cars.
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