Trying to Protect Her Baby
The following excerpt is from an August 16 story in the Riverside Press-Enterprise
Family and friends of Anyssia Escamilla gathered at St. Catherine of Siena Church in Rialto for her funeral. The pregnant 17-year-old's remains were found eariler this month in a Corona landfill.
Friends and family remembered 17-year-old Anyssia Escamilla on Monday as a devoted mother to her 3-year-old son and a loving friend.
About 500 mourners, some wearing T-shirts with her picture, packed St. Catherine of Siena Church in Rialto for an hour-long funeral Mass for the Bloomington girl.
Her body was found earlier this month in a Corona landfill after an almost three-month search following her May 11 disappearance.
A week after her disappearance, her boyfriend Jesus Avitia Jr., 18, confessed to killing Escamilla at his Fontana home, police said. Avitia, who authorities said is the father of her unborn baby, has been charged with killing Anyssia and the fetus.
Avitia disposed of the body in a trash can that had been collected by trash haulers.
Detectives spent 78 days searching two landfills before locating the body at El Sobrante Landfill in Corona on Aug. 4. Some of the Fontana police detectives who took part in the search attended the funeral.
The Rev. Steve Porter, pastor of the church that the family attends, said Anyssia died a martyr because she resisted Avitia's insistence that she get an abortion. Police said a disagreement over how to handle her pregnancy was a motive in the killing.
"She knew the baby in her was precious and she was going to protect the baby the best she could," Porter said.
The service was also a funeral for Angel, her unborn son, he said.
