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Memorial for girl whose body was found in ravine

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UPDATE: Police seek link to missing girls, slain teen

A memorial of candles, flowers and prayers is growing in a Grant Hill neighborhood for a 14-year-old girl who was fatally shot and dumped in a nearby ravine.

Authorities have not released her name, but those who came to grieve at a spot near where her body was found identified her as Anna Hernandez.

“It’s horrible. She was just a little girl,” said Sonjia Viruegas, 46, of City Heights, who belongs to Mothers with a Message, a support group for women suffering the violent loss of a child. She said the group has reached out to help Anna’s family.

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“I’d like to speak to who did this,” Viruegas said. “I’d say turn yourself in, or it will only get worse. They’ve not only destroyed her family, but a part of their own.”

Anna’s name was painted on a small, white cross decorated with plastic roses and beads amid an array of candles, bouquets, a Bible open to the Twenty-Third Psalm, and unopened bottles of Jack Daniels whiskey and 40-ounce Miller High Life beer.

Her partially decomposed body was found on Nov. 18 in a lush, green ravine behind a ramshackle triplex on Market Street near 28th Street. An autopsy revealed she had been shot in the torso, San Diego police homicide Lt. Mike Hastings said.

Hastings said detectives had questioned residents and were working to identify a suspect in the slaying. He has not released any other information about the homicide.

Several residents who live near the top of the ravine said they seldom hear people down there, but have occasionally seen signs of transient camps.

Hermina Inda, who has lived for six months in the triplex near where Anna’s body was found, said the girl’s cousin, Nelly Espinosa, lives in the upstairs unit but has been missing for a week. Inda said Nelly, 12, lives with her mother, a brother, and her mother’s boyfriend.

“The last time I saw Nellie was last Tuesday or Wednesday, when she came home from school,” Inda said Tuesday at her home. “It’s a sad thing and scary. I have nine kids. The killer could be around here.”

A vigil for Anna is planned for 7 tonight at New Greater Apostolic Faith Temple Church, 138 28th St. in San Diego, organized by a group known as DOVE, Dreaming of Violence-free Everywhere.

More than 200 people turned up at the Market Street makeshift memorial spot on Saturday night, said Katie Tucker of City Heights, who was visiting a nearby resident.

“It’s very sad to think somebody could put her body right here,” Tucker said. “I’m sure her family’s devastated.”

Bevelynn Bravo, who founded the local Mothers with a Message group, joined Viruegas at the memorial on Tuesday to pay her respects. She said members work with San Diego police on curfew sweeps and at juvenile diversion programs, telling young people the potentially lethal consequences of bad decisions.

“We share a mother’s pain when their child makes mistakes,” Bravo said. “It can kill you emotionally, spiritually and physically.”

Bravo’s son Jaime Bravo, Jr., 21, was stabbed to death in San Diego in 2012. Viruegas said her son, Christopher Sanchez, went to prison at age 19 for killing a woman in Encanto, and died in a prison riot four years later.

“With other mothers, we will stay as long as she wants us,” Bravo said. “We just hug them, sit with them. Sometimes there’s no words.”

pauline.repard@sduniontribune.com

susan.shroder@sduniontribune.com

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