Paths ran parallel for suspect, slain girl
12:06 AM PDT on Wednesday, September 20, 2006
The two teenagers had a lot in common.
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Both were thrust into the foster-care system when their parents were arrested. Both were runaways.
Now, one is dead, and the other is charged in the killing.
Kayla Wood, 16, was found stabbed to death Sept. 9 in a burned building in Moreno Valley.
Anthony Bobadilla, 15, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to torture and murder charges in Kayla's death.
Riverside County Deputy District Attorney Michael Hestrin has declined to speak about specifics of the case, but he has said that the girl suffered a brutal death.
Jose Alfredo Solarza, 15, Bobadilla's cousin, and a 19-year-old man, Roman Gabriel Aldana, also have pleaded not guilty to charges in the girl's death. Bobadilla and Solarza were arraigned in Riverside County Juvenile Court. They are being charged as adults and will next appear, along with Aldana, in Riverside County Superior Court on Oct. 10.
Parents Arrested
Bobadilla landed in foster care after Riverside police arrested his parents late last year. He was lonely and upset, his girlfriend said. He ran away, staying with friends.
"He would always talk about how he missed his mom and dad," said girlfriend Daniela Loza, 15, of Riverside. She broke down crying repeatedly during interviews Tuesday.
Daniela Loza and her sister, Priscilla Loza, 23, said they cannot believe that the good-hearted person they know is capable of such crimes.
In recent months, they said, Bobadilla had become part of their family. He would meet Daniela after her school day ended and help her mother with chores. He enjoyed brushing Daniela's long, dark hair.
But he yearned to have his family back and was confused about the circumstances that tore it apart, the sisters said.
"I think he was just lost," Priscilla Loza said.
Kayla, a blond, blue-eyed girl who dreamed of being a model, also appeared lost, records and interviews show. She ran away almost daily from a Moreno Valley group home that specializes in caring for children who have been sexually abused or have substance-abuse issues.
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She had been sexually abused by a relative and was diagnosed with a mental disorder, and authorities suspected that she was involved in prostitution.
At age 13, she was placed in the foster system after her mother's arrest on drug charges. She moved in with her grandmother in Oregon for a time but was returned to the foster system in Moreno Valley because her grandmother said she could not control her, child welfare authorities said.
Kayla ran away from the group home for the last time on Aug. 31.
A small memorial, made up of few candles and two small bouquets of dried flowers, remained Tuesday in front of the burned-out abandoned home where Kayla's body was found.
Her aunt, Ann Wood, said she has no idea how Kayla crossed paths with the teenagers accused of killing her. Daniela Loza said Bobadilla had never mentioned Kayla's name.
Wood, a resident of Hesperia, said she wishes she had spent more time with her niece and remains angry that Kayla encountered danger after fleeing what was supposed to be the protective environment of a group home. She added that Kayla's and Bobadilla's pasts in foster care point to their difficult lives.
"This only goes to show that these kids need their family's love," she said.
Could Not Care for Him
After Bobadilla's parents were arrested, the rest of the family left him to the foster system because, for various reasons, they could not care for him, said Priscilla Guzman, 18, of Rialto, a cousin.
Prosecutors filed charges against Bobadilla on Friday, then amended their complaint with charges against Solarza on Monday. At a brief court hearing Tuesday morning, the teenagers, both with closely cropped hair and wearing orange jumpsuits, showed no obvious emotion.
Columba Caperon, Solarza's mother, attended the hearing with his aunt and two brothers. They asked a judge about visiting the teenage cousins in custody, and Caperon said Bobadilla, her sister's son, has no parent to visit him because his mother and father both are incarcerated.
"I want the authorities to investigate this ... because they have been threatened at gunpoint," she said.
The judge cut her off.
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The family declined to comment after the hearing.
Aldana, 19, the adult suspect in Kayla's killing, was arraigned in Riverside County Superior Court on Tuesday afternoon. He remained stoic as a court-appointed attorney entered a not-guilty plea on his behalf.
His mother, Virginia Berella, reached at her Moreno Valley home, said she did not hear anything about her son's possible involvement until investigators showed up to question her 5-year-old grandson. She declined to comment further.
Parents in Court
Hours before Aldana's hearing, the parents of one of his co-defendants, Bobadilla, appeared in the same courtroom as defendants in a sexual-assault case involving children.
Jose Bobadilla, 35, and his wife, Isidra Caperon, 36, face various charges stemming from the alleged molestation of children from 1995 to 2005, when the couple was arrested and charged, court records show.
Jose Bobadilla is charged with willful cruelty to a child and four counts of committing lewd acts on a child under 14.
He is described as actively molesting children, while Caperon, who is also known as Sheila Bobadilla, is accused of allowing the acts to occur and not reporting them. She is charged with three counts of willful cruelty to a child, court records show.
Both are being held at the Robert Presley Detention Center in Riverside. They are to return to court Oct. 25.
Guzman, the younger Bobadilla's cousin, said the teen's father learned of his son's arrest from jail. The father was in shock, she said.
"He felt like he had no right to tell him what to do because he had no example to show him," she said.
Bobadilla remained scarred by the breakup in his family, the Lozas said. He had nowhere to go, they said. Daniela Loza said he trusted her more than anyone else and loved her.
She said they had met at a dance at Riverside's Sierra Middle School.
He lived briefly in a group home in Calimesa and also lived in foster care in Murrieta. At some point, he ran away, the Lozas said. He was desperate to go back to school, they said.
On a MySpace profile, Bobadilla identifies himself as a 17-year-old from Riverside.
"Hey whats up my name is Anthony and I don't go to school," reads the profile, which features a photograph of Bobadilla. "If I had the chance I would go. I currently a (sic) a runaway from a foster home. I'm in love with this girl named Daniela. She means a lot to me and I'll do anything 4 her."
About three weeks ago, Anthony visited his mother in jail, the Lozas said.
He was happy to see her, they said.
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BSRanch Perspective:
For an adult to abuse a child a small inocent mind. Givnig this mind such stress that she feels that she has such stressful mental disorder from it to where she is given medication to treat said mental illness. They didn't feel any security at home that when one of them got a boy friend they ran away with him. Now the one that was sickest, and needed medication to keep her thoughts straight due to the treatment that she had through her life. Now both Parents are in Jail, along with the boy friend for Killing the sister, and trying to hide the crime by setting the corps on fire in a building. but as criminals find out the hard way is that di doesn't work.
No, these girls didn't get a fair shake but who does in this day and age, who does? In this case everyone lost, the girls lost a sister, parents, boy friends, the Parents lost freedom, chidren, and what they thought was Love for their children, and they also live with the guilt of what they did to those innocent children, but if I know criminals they don't care. That is why we have prisons, because they don't care. if they live you live or what!!
BSRanch
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