Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground

Jorelys Rivera, age 7

Her mommy had to work the night shift at the Canton, Georgia chicken processing plant.  It’s the only work available for the young mother of three. A teenage family friend was the babysitter who watched little Jorelys and her two younger siblings.  On Friday afternoon, around 5 p.m., the teen watched Jorelys leave the River Ridge apartment complex playground to return to their apartment to get a soft drink.  She never returned.

Jorelys’ mom, Joselin, hadn’t seen her since Thursday.  By the time she returned home from work Friday morning, Jorelys had left for school. After school, Joselin was sleeping while the children played outside.

A huge search ensued.  For reasons not immediately revealed, the police quickly began treating the case as an abduction.   And Joselin’s two younger children were removed from her custody by authorities who cited her for negligence in supervision.

All weekend, searchers went door to door in the huge apartment complex searching and questioning residents.  Every registered sex offender in the area was questioned.  Police searched the complex grounds and the trash dumpsters outside the buildings in the complex. Nothing turned up. 

On Monday, December 5, someone discovered the trash compactor on the grounds had not been searched.  Why?  It was an oversight, they said.  Apartment residents interviewed on the news said they had put trash in the machine several times during the weekend and hadn’t noticed anything unusual.

There she was.  The little angel, as described by her mother, appeared to have been severely stabbed, beaten, raped and murdered and thrown into the compactor.  Perhaps the killer expected her lifeless body to be compacted with the trash.

Look at that child’s face in the picture.  Imagine how that smile must have changed when she realized her abductor meant to harm her.  She was naïve, even for seven, her mother says, but eventually she had to have become terrified.  How much did she feel?  Did he knock her unconscious before he violated her innocence?  Or was he more interested in her suffering?  

Or was it even a he?  Has the world become so alien that we now must consider that a woman could commit such a heinous act of violence?

This writer is haunted by this child’s fate.  That she is dead before she even had a chance to live is a travesty.  But the images that cross my mind as I contemplate the hours that followed her snatching are nauseating.