TUCSON, AZ — A 17-year-old girl was found dead on March 15. Her body was dumped in a swimming pool. A 16-year-old is charged with manslaughter, and two others are charged with covering up the killing.
“I wake up every morning trying to find her. She's not there. You know? Just wish she would listen. And I wish that this could be an example for other kids to listen to their parents. Just listen to their parents. That's all she had to do. But she was a good girl.”
Fred Jerez is remembering his daughter Azucena. She was at a party, near midtown, and a 16-year-old boy was playing with a gun. The gun went off. The bullet hit Azucena in the head.
Police say three boys wrapped her body in a sheet, dropped it in a nearby swimming pool, then tried to burn the sheets and hide the gun.
Jane Price is Azucena’s grandmother but adopted her and raised her as a daughter.
“It's devastating. It's heartbreaking. It's when you know the details of the case it just, you just can't—- you struggle with it. You see it in your dreams at night. I mean, it's just you can't get away from it.”
Azucena’s biological mother Cynthia Myers says she was getting her life on track, working a job she loved, and was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“It's so sad because she was so excited to work for Chuck E. Cheese. She just got this job and she called me and she told me, 'Mom, I get to play Chuck E.,' and she was really excited about that because she loved kids. And she, you know, most kids don't want to play Chuck E. and she did because she wanted to play with children and you know, she is just a good person. She didn't deserve any of this.”
The family says the 16-year-old who took that young life does deserve harsh punishment, preferably stiffer than the manslaughter charge he’s facing right now.
