Calif. woman pleads guilty in Sandra Cantu murder
By TERRY COLLINS and MARCUS WOHLSEN (AP)
May 11, 2010
TRACY, Calif. — A local Sunday school teacher's guilty plea in the killing of an 8-year-old girl has brought relief to residents of this small California city, even as disturbing questions remained — including how, where and why the girl was murdered.
Hours after 29-year-old Melissa Huckaby admitted on Monday to killing Sandra Cantu, police stood guard at the entrance to the mobile home park where both the victim and the defendant lived.
Evelyn McClelland, 61, a neighborhood resident for 26 years, believed the plea in last year's killing will bring some measure of peace to the victim's family and to a Northern California community striving to overcome the mistrust that descended after the girl's disappearance.
"The children are back outside playing again. This all closes a very painful chapter in Tracy," McClelland said.
A 10-day search after Sandra — a playmate of Huckaby's daughter — went missing in March 2009 ended when her body was found stuffed in a black suitcase pulled from an irrigation pond a few miles from the mobile home park.
Huckaby was arrested less than a week later after telling a reporter that the suitcase that contained Sandra's body was hers, but it had been stolen out of her driveway the day Sandra disappeared.
Her guilty plea in San Joaquin County Superior Court to first-degree murder with a special circumstance of kidnapping came in a deal with prosecutors.
All other charges — including two involving rape and lewd or lascivious conduct with a child under 14 — were dropped under the agreement, according to court spokeswoman Sharon Morris. Huckaby would have been eligible for the death penalty if convicted in a jury trial.
Morris said Huckaby now faces 25 years to life in prison without the possibility of parole when she is sentenced next month.
READ MORE ABOUT MELISSA HUCKABY'S GUILTY PLEA ...
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hTgIBQMy%20R5y2qNQNgf0qhvaroXQQD9FKGDS00
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment