Police Believe Carrollton Homicide Victim was Sexually Assualted
Carrollto - Hidden in the bushes, behind a wall in a woman's front yard, 10-year-old Jasmen Gonzalez was found dead. She was laying face-down, stabbed in the chest.
"One of the [neighbors] looked outside her blinds, and saw the half-naked body lying parallel to the house, right in those bushes behind that little fence there," said neighbor Bruce McDonald, pointing towards where Gonzalez was found.
Searchers found the girl with no shirt and her underwear pulled down. Court documents revealed that police suspect she was sexually assaulted.
"We believe that this is not a random act," said Lt. Doug Mitchell of the Carrollton Police.
Police say Gonzalez was snatched from a bedroom in the Walnut Creek Apartment complex late Saturday night. The girl's family, which was visiting from Oklahoma City, was in town for a family reunion with at least 12 other relatives.
When the party started breaking up just before midnight, the family realized Gonzalez was not in the bed.
Overnight, officers executed multiple search warrants, looking for blood, DNA and Jasmen's red blanket. Officers searched two homes and three cars, including the black SUV of 23-year-old Jose Concepcion Sifuentes, a family friend and now a person of interest in the investigation.
"We're not sure that Jose is the guy that did it yet," said Mitchell. "I mean, to be fair to everybody involved, we don't need to be pointing a finger at any one person. We still have a lot of work to do."
The family told police Sifuentes went missing just around the time that Gonzalez disappeared. Sifuentes has been booked on "an immigration hold with other charges pending." A bicycle was seized from Sifuentes' home Monday. He has not been charged in Gonzalez' disappearance or death.
An Amber Alert was never issued in the case. Carrollton police said they wanted one, but the state denied it because no one at the time could determine if Gonzalez had walked away, or had been kidnapped.
Police are waiting for DNA test results to come in before making an arrest, but officers told News 8 that they also need probable cause, which is something they do not have yet.