Thaindian News

The family of slain 8-year old Sandra Cantu held a private funeral for her in Tracy on Wednesday. People who attended it at the Fry memorial Chapel wore a ribbon with a picture of the girl. Her casket was placed in a horse-drawn carriage and taken to Tracy.

Among the attendees were her family and friends and several police officers who had worked on the case. Meanwhile the woman accused of murdering Cantu tried to take her own life before the police arrested her last week. Melissa Huckaby, 28, tried to swallow razor blades in a suicide attempt, according to reports. Huckaby is now charged with one count of murder with three circumstances: kidnapping, rape with a foreign object and lewd or lascivious conduct with a child under 14. The circumstances imply that if she is charged, Huckaby would face prison without parole or the death penalty.

Huckaby was a Sunday school teacher at her grandfather’s small church where the authorities believe Sandra was killed. The church is next to the trailer park where both Sandra and Huckaby lived. The police conducted search investigations in Huckaby’s home on Tuesday again but did not reveal if they found or anything or why they returned for the search.

According to police reports Sandra was probably already dead when her body was found on April 6 in a suitcase that had been dumped in an irrigation pond. Farm workers draining the irrigation ditch had found her body. She had disappeared from her Orchard Estates Mbile Home community on March 27 and last video footage shows the second grader skipping along the road to a friend’s place.