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Five months after abduction, Cecilia's body is found A mysterious abduction that baffled police and terrified parents in Canada's biggest city came to a grim end Sunday when police confirmed that remains found earlier this weekend in nearby Mississauga were those of missing nine-year-old Cecilia Zhang.
By Sunday - just two days before Cecilia would have celebrated her 10th birthday - forensic experts confirmed the body was hers. The dire news came just five months after the girl was snatched from her parents' home in northeast Toronto.
"I really cannot say what kind of monster they are to do such a thing to Cecilia," a visibly shaken Jack Jia, the Zhang family friend who has frequently spoken on behalf of the girl's distraught parents since her Oct. 20 abduction, said outside the family's red-brick home.
"She's such a nice, nice, nice girl. She had never intended to hurt anybody."
Flowers were piling up Sunday evening on the doorstep of the home as news began to spread in her neighbourhood that the gifted Grade 4 pupil has been found dead.
Investigators, who have been publicly insisting for months that they believed Cecilia was still alive, released few details about the case Sunday, simply saying that they were in the midst of a homicide investigation.
"I'm not in a position to release any information whatsoever of an evidentiary nature," said Acting Insp. Rick De Facendis at an afternoon news conference held near the spot where the remains were found.
De Facendis said the area was not heavily travelled, and the hiker stumbled on the child's remains purely by chance.
Cecilia's parents, Raymond Zhang and Sherry Xu, had been planning a birthday party with friends, neighbours and teachers to honour their missing daughter when the girl's remains were discovered.
De Facendis said Toronto police arrived on the Zhang doorstep early Sunday morning and broke the news to her parents.
A neighbour and friend who would only identify himself as Mr. Yuan said he kept a picture of Cecilia in his car in the hopes that she would return home safe and sound.
"Cecilia is like my daughter."
Cecilia was discovered missing last fall when her mother went into her bedroom to wake her for school.
A broken screen window at the rear of the top floor of the two-storey home suggested an abduction.
Shortly after her mother called police, an Amber Alert was issued, flashing news of the child's disappearance to millions of motorists on area highways.
Police then began an intense search of the northeast Toronto neighbourhood where Cecilia lived with her parents and her 75-year-old grandfather. At first, Cecilia's parents were so distraught that they would only issue statements through police pleading for the safe return of their daughter. They made their first public appearance Oct. 24 in a heart-wrenching news conference. Since then, Cecilia's parents, backed by members of the Chinese community, started a website and were involved in numerous other efforts to keep Cecilia's abduction in the public eye. Volunteers distributed Police confirmed March 28, 2004, that the human remains found in a wooded ravine west of Toronto are those of nine-year-old Cecilia Zhang. Police believe Zhang was abducted by an intruder as she slept in her family's Toronto home October 19, 2003. Zhang's parents Sherry Xu (L) and Raymond Zhang (R) are overcome by emotion while pleading for the safe return of their abducted daughter at a press conference in Toronto, October 24, 2003.thousands of flyers and posters bearing Cecilia's picture. They were distributed throughout Toronto subways and buses, on taxis, and in shopping centres and other public areas. Police soon ruled out that the abduction was the random act of a predator, and said that the possibility Cecilia was kidnapped for profit was one of the "themes" they were exploring. They later spent two days in the Brampton area, northwest of Toronto, canvassing patrons of a Tim Hortons doughnut shop and a rural general store, where calls were made from two pay phones to Cecilia's home before she was reported missing. Her body was found almost directly south of that area, about a 20 minutes' drive away. When part of reward money put up by the community was retracted, her parents offered their home in exchange for their daughter's safe return. The case garnered international attention, landing Toronto police on the felon-hunting show America's Most Wanted. Chinese authorities were also consulted. |
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