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Team CoverageA community is grieving this morning after a missing 7-year-old girl is found dead.
"It's a tragic ending to this case, one that will be difficult for us to deal with for a long time," said South Salt Lake Police Chief Chris Snyder.
Police took five men into custody for questioning and have since released at least two of them. This morning, a police officer told KSL a man will be formally charged in the crime. A man in handcuffs was walked out of South Salt Lake police headquarters around 6:50 a.m., loaded into a police car and taken away. We infer that he is the suspect who will be charged. Police haven't released his name. The status of the other men is unclear at this time.
#apt
Police found the body of Hser Nay Moo just a day after the little girl went missing from her family's apartment in South Salt Lake.
Ironically, the girl's body was found in the last apartment that was searched in the South Parc Townhome complex, where she lived. Agents weren't able to search that apartment during the initial sweep of the complex because no one was home and agents didn't have a search warrant to go inside. But they returned around 7:00 yesterday evening. Someone was home then. Four FBI agents asked to search the apartment. They were allowed in. That's where they found the body in the bathroom.
As neighbors looked on and police put up crime scene tape, forensic investigators closed in on the apartment where Hser Nay Moo's body was found.
#girl
"We now launch into the next phase of this investigation, which obviously is the collection of evidence and prosecution of our suspected offenders," Snyder said.
Bystanders held a makeshift vigil while police worked. Neighbors say they knew bad news was to come when they saw authorities earlier in the evening running through the complex.
A neighbor, Maria Hernandez, said, "I saw two plain-clothed detectives running through the side. They were trying to hop the fence, and I told them, 'Come through here. It's quicker.' I let them through my house and out the back door. I saw them run. The minute I saw them pull out the police tape, I knew it was no good."
Police aren't saying what connection, if any, the suspects had to the girl's family. Nor would they comment on whether any had a criminal record. But they would say they are taking this case personally.
Snyder said, "I don't even think it needs to be said. This is a 7-year-old girl. Although we've only been on this case a very short time, people are emotionally invested. The investigators you see out here are operating on two days without sleep, and they refuse to go home. We wanted to bring closure to this thing as quickly as we possibly could."
There's still very little we do know at this point, like how Hser Nay Moo died. But police did tell us they found trauma on the little girl's body.
A press conference has been tentatively scheduled for 4 p.m. We will carry it live on Eyewitness News at 4, KSL Newsradio 102.7FM/1160AM and KSL.com
#candleone
Many community members have a lot of questions. They want to know why this happened. One woman who helped search for the girl told us she just wished they could do more. "It's very hard. Right here we're our own little community. There's a lot of different nationalities here, and regardless of what you are, we still come together."
A candlelight vigil was held last night after the severity of the situation set in. Hser Nay Moo was described as a bright, happy child with a smile that lit up a room. Brandie Egleston said of the girl, "She was happy. She played with everybody. Even though the language barrier, she could still make gestures. She was always happy. She was always smiling. She was missing her two front teeth. But very friendly, very happy."
Her family is devastated, of course. A family friend said they are coping with the help of other families in the Burmese community. He also said her brothers are taking the news the hardest out of the entire family. "I think they're experiencing a lot of anger, a lot of feelings of guilt for maybe something they could have done, which of course they couldn't have done anything."
Family friend Paul Van Dyke said, "She was a wonderful girl. She had a light within her. [She was] vivacious, pretty, a joy to be around."
E-mail: lprichard@ksl.com
E-mail: ngonzales @ksl.com
E-mail: aadams@ksl.com
