Toddler's body found in church's baptismal basin
Pastor Dale Morgan
Toddler's body found in church's baptismal basin*
POSTED: 2031 GMT (0431 HKT), March 5, 2007
Story Highlights
• Eighteen-month-old girl was found dead at church services in southern
Brazil
• Inspector says the girl was raped and then strangled; police have no
suspects
• Relatives took child to church room with other children, police say
• Parishioners later found girl floating face down in the baptismal basin
SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) -- The body of a strangled toddler was found
inside the baptismal basin of an evangelical church in southern Brazil,
police and church officials said Monday.
Eighteen-month-old Gabrielli Cristina Eichholz was found dead Saturday
during services at the recently inaugurated Seventh-day Adventist Church
in Joinville, a city 250 miles (400 kilometers) southwest of Sao Paulo,
said police inspector Rubens Passos de Freitas.
"Gabrielli was raped and then strangled to death. Her killer or killers
also hit her over the head with a heavy blunt object," Freitas said.
No one has been arrested, and Freitas said police have no suspects.
Parishioners of the small two-story concrete church were filtering in
and out Monday, saying they were praying for the girl's soul.
"Everyone is in shock," church spokesman Felipe Lemos said. "Nothing
like this has ever happened in any of our churches anywhere in the world."
Relatives took her to the church Saturday morning and left her in a room
with some 20 other children being cared for by four members of the
church, Freitas said.
After the services, Gabrielli's relatives went to the room to look for
her, but she was not there.
Parishioners found her floating face down in the baptismal basin, which
is next to the altar but placed in such a way that "no one could see the
water or anything else inside," Freitas said.
"I still don't understand how no one saw or heard anything," he said.
Freitas said he believes the girl may have been killed in one of the
church's unused rooms or in a bathroom and was then carried to the basin
by the killer or killers.
The local O Catarinense newspaper quoted one of the women who had been
caring for the children as saying that Gabrielli had been picked up from
the room by a man claiming to be her father.
"I can't understand how something like this could happen inside a
church," Gabrielli's mother, Andreia Pereira Eichholz, told Joinville's
A Noticia newspaper. "I want to know who grabbed my daughter. I don't
feel any anger or hate. I just want to understand 'Why?' "
Pereira described her daughter as a happy girl "who was always laughing."
Her husband, Juliarde, told the newspaper: "I just want justice. I want
to know who took my daughter away from us."