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Author Topic: Sandra Cantu #4 4/27/09 -  (Read 517091 times)
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Tracygirl
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« Reply #340 on: May 08, 2009, 07:18:14 PM »

Cantu Reward Goes to Farmworker
Thurs. May 7, 2009
TRACY, CA - The man who found the suitcase carrying the remains of Sandra Cantu was presented with a reward Thursday.

Jose Luis Franco, who spotted the luggage while working at a dairy farm irrigation pond April 6, said he was devastated to learn it held the missing 8-year-old. The Tracy girl was reported missing March 27. A neighbor, Melissa Huckaby, has been charged with Sandra's kidnapping, rape and murder.

The Carole Sund/Carrington Memorial Reward Foundation presented Franco with the $21,643 reward in a private ceremony Thursday. Tracy police said Franco was uncomfortable with the public presentation that had been planned.

Franco had wanted the funds to go Sandra Cantu's family but the reward was established in such a way that that wasn't possible, according to a foundation representative.

Franco told News10 previously that he planned to use the funds for his children's education.
http://www.news10.net/news/story.aspx?storyid=58996&catid=2


He sounds like a nice man.
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JessStar
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« Reply #341 on: May 08, 2009, 07:55:34 PM »

Cantu Reward Goes to Farmworker
Thurs. May 7, 2009
TRACY, CA - The man who found the suitcase carrying the remains of Sandra Cantu was presented with a reward Thursday.

Jose Luis Franco, who spotted the luggage while working at a dairy farm irrigation pond April 6, said he was devastated to learn it held the missing 8-year-old. The Tracy girl was reported missing March 27. A neighbor, Melissa Huckaby, has been charged with Sandra's kidnapping, rape and murder.

The Carole Sund/Carrington Memorial Reward Foundation presented Franco with the $21,643 reward in a private ceremony Thursday. Tracy police said Franco was uncomfortable with the public presentation that had been planned.

Franco had wanted the funds to go Sandra Cantu's family but the reward was established in such a way that that wasn't possible, according to a foundation representative.

Franco told News10 previously that he planned to use the funds for his children's education.
http://www.news10.net/news/story.aspx?storyid=58996&catid=2


He sounds like a nice man.

I agree Tracygirl.  Nice man, but another victim.  His life is changed forever.

Let's keep this spirit alive, everyone.


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Tracygirl
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« Reply #342 on: May 08, 2009, 08:45:53 PM »

Your right JessStar, he is a victim as well of all of this. I hope and pray he can come to terms with finding the suitcase.
I love that pic of Sandra, she was such a cute girl. It seems too her face changed a lot in the past year. It went from a little girl to a medium girl.

This weekend is going to be a difficult one for her mother, poor thing she is on my mind and in my prayers.
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« Reply #343 on: May 08, 2009, 09:25:38 PM »

Your right JessStar, he is a victim as well of all of this. I hope and pray he can come to terms with finding the suitcase.
I love that pic of Sandra, she was such a cute girl. It seems too her face changed a lot in the past year. It went from a little girl to a medium girl.

This weekend is going to be a difficult one for her mother, poor thing she is on my mind and in my prayers.

too sad to see her pictures and how happy she was..You could tell that she loved her life! what a damn shame that she is no longer with her family....sad sad sad!
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« Reply #344 on: May 09, 2009, 07:51:23 AM »

‘Most terrible day in our lives’

Tracy man, his wife heartbroken by his discovery of suitcase with Sandra Cantu’s body inside


By Jennie Rodriguez
Stockton Record Staff Writer
May 08, 2009 6:00 AM

TRACY - Jose Luis Franco wasn’t prepared for what surfaced in the irrigation pond he drained the morning of April 6 at Bachetti & Silva Dairy Farms.

Franco was enjoying the sunny day when he emptied the ditch surrounded by miles of grassy fields just north of the Tracy Boulevard exit off Interstate 205. Until he discovered the suitcase.

Franco, a dairy farm worker and father of four, had been praying for Sandra Cantu, the little girl he’d never met but whose face had become well-known to strangers across California.

Like many in Tracy, Franco and his family had hungered for information about the skipping 8-year-old girl who disappeared March 27 from Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park, about a mile south of Franco’s duplex.

Franco tried pulling the suitcase out of the water, but it was too heavy. Well aware of the massive search effort that received nationwide attention, Franco had a feeling about the suitcase and what it contained. He hoped his gut was wrong.

“I felt like someone had spilled cold water on me. A chill in my body. I thought, ‘Could this be the little girl?’ ” Franco said in Spanish.

“It was something terrible. The most terrible day in our lives,” recalled Margarita Franco, Jose Franco’s wife.

When Jose Franco couldn’t lift the luggage, he notified his supervisor, who called police. Then, Jose Franco called his wife.

Margarita Franco had concerns of her own that day. Her children have attended Delta Island Elementary School, a campus with mostly migrant children, and a place that parents call more than a school. It’s a community center. But the Tracy Unified School District, facing severe budget shortfalls, had decided to close the school - among the smallest in attendance and the most expensive per pupil to operate.

So Margarita Franco and several other parents were on a bus, touring area charter schools. She was focused on the needs of her children and whether she and other parents might be able to start a charter school.

After the call from her husband, 34-year-old Margarita Franco’s thoughts were scattered. “We wanted to believe there was anything else in there but the body of a little girl,” she said.

She returned home around 3 p.m. Jose Franco returned from work just after 5 p.m. The couple watched television news coverage for updates on the suitcase, but police had said nothing publicly throughout the day. A fear gnawed at them.

“I was nervous, because I was thinking about the girl. I wanted to know if she was in there,” Jose Franco said.

“He didn’t eat that day,” Margarito Franco said of her husband.

At 8:50 that night, police announced the sad news. The intense search was over, and Jose Franco’s worst fears had been realized.

On April 10, police arrested 28-year-old Melissa Huckaby, a Sunday school teacher at a church near the mobile home park and the mother of one of Sandra’s friends.

Huckaby is being charged with murder and three special circumstances of kidnapping, rape with an instrument and lewd and lascivious acts on a child younger than 14.

Jose Franco has worked on the farm for 11 years, providing for his family and trying to create a better future for them.

The Carole Sund/Carrington Memorial Reward Foundation had offered a $21,643 reward for the tip that would lead to finding Sandra. When her body was found, Tracy police initially said no one would receive the reward; they’d hoped she would be found alive. But on Thursday, police said that, after further discussion with the foundation, Jose Franco would receive the reward.

Sgt. Tony Sheneman, a Tracy police spokesman, told reporters that the farm worker was reluctant at first and asked that the reward money be given to Sandra’s family. But that’s not the organization’s policy, so the money went to him, said Scott Webb, director of the foundation.

Webb said the foundation has given Sandra’s family more than $8,000, which was donated by people across the nation. Tracy Crime Stoppers also raised $10,000 for the family.

The Tracy Police Department had called a news conference to present the farm worker with the reward money.

Jose Franco decided a half-hour before the public event to accept the money in private. He wanted to avoid media attention.

“We gave some interviews,” Margarita Franco said in Spanish while her husband was at work on Thursday. “We thought that’s when (the media attention) would end.”

The Francos are from Jalisco, Mexico, but immigrated to work in Tracy in the mid-1990s.

Margarita Franco said she and her husband are in the process of becoming legal residents, but their four children - Alondra, 3; Jorge, 5; Maria, 8; and Miguel, 11 - are U.S. citizens, all having been born in Tracy.

The parents plan to use the reward money to set up college funds for their children.

They also have become more protective. “We don’t even let them play outside anymore,” Margarita Franco said.

As she cooked lunch Thursday, Margarita Franco said the family is trying to move on with normal life, but they have forever been touched by Sandra.

“We are content because the money will help us, but we are heartbroken because what happened is something very depressing,” Margarita Franco said.

“Do you believe a person who has found a human being dead will ever be the same?”
Edit to add link: http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090508/A_NEWS/905080394
Contact reporter Jennie Rodriguez at (209) 943-8564 or jrodriguez@recordnet.com.
Please try to include the link when bringing articles from outside Scared Monkeys.

« Last Edit: May 09, 2009, 10:26:53 AM by MuffyBee » Logged
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« Reply #345 on: May 09, 2009, 08:57:24 AM »

I feel for this man and his family...how do you ever get that out of your mind and thoughts?
But at least he has given Sandra's family some "peace" (? if there ever is such a thing in this cases) by finding her so that she can rest in peace...and they know where she is ...
I get angry all over again ever time I think about Sandra and the senselessness of her death...
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« Reply #346 on: May 09, 2009, 09:31:51 AM »

This is going to be a very sad Mother's Day Weekend for all of those involved in this tragedy as well as the whole community.  I don't think people will feel much better for quite some time.  Perhaps once there is a trial it will bring some degree of closure, scant though it might be.

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« Reply #347 on: May 09, 2009, 10:24:32 AM »

I feel for this man and his family...how do you ever get that out of your mind and thoughts?
But at least he has given Sandra's family some "peace" (? if there ever is such a thing in this cases) by finding her so that she can rest in peace...and they know where she is ...
I get angry all over again ever time I think about Sandra and the senselessness of her death...

I'm with you cookie.  My emotions run the gamut every time this little girl and her family pop into my head (which is basically every day).
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« Reply #348 on: May 09, 2009, 11:14:19 AM »

Who could blame her . . .

Source: Cantu's Mom Wants To Move From Mobile Home Park
Bad Memories Haunt Mother, Friend Says

POSTED: 4:06 pm PDT May 8, 2009
UPDATED: 7:49 pm PDT May 8, 2009

TRACY, Calif. -- The police checkpoint is gone from the front of Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park where candles, flowers and and stuffed animals sat in memoriam for 8-year-old Sandra Cantu.

According to a friend of Maria Chavez, Cantu's mother, KCRA 3 has learned that Chavez wants to move away from the mobile home park because memories of her daughter and the events that took place at the park are too much to bear.

Cantu's body was found in a suitcase pulled from an irrigation pond north of Tracy. She disappeared from the mobile home park on March 27, setting off an intense hunt that drew national media attention.

Melissa Huckaby, a Sunday school teacher at her grandfather's congregation, was arrested just a few days before Easter.

Some churches in Tracy said attendance was down on that Easter Sunday.

Chavez, along with her two other daughters, live with her parents at the mobile home park.

The family is getting support from local churches, such as Victory Christian Church in Tracy.

Diane White distributed religious pamphlets in the neighborhood after Cantu's disappearance.

White's church is across the street from Clover Road Baptist Church, where Huckaby taught Sunday school, and said she is also disturbed by what has happened in Tracy.

"My stepdaughter moved here 30 years ago so she would have a better life for her children and people are seeing bank robberies, all kinds of things are happening," White said. "And they came to Tracy to get away from places like Sacramento, gangs, and murders every day."

Police said Huckaby acted alone, but many residents still expect another arrest or even two.

Huckaby is scheduled to be arraigned on May 22. She could enter a plea at that time.

http://www.kcra.com/news/19411388/detail.html
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MuffyBee
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« Reply #349 on: May 09, 2009, 11:42:22 AM »

JessStar~  I agree with your comment "who could blame her.."  I understand why Sandra's mom wants to move from the mobile home park.  Maybe if she moved, it would help her on the road to healing.  I cannot imagine what Sandra's family is going through.    
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« Reply #350 on: May 09, 2009, 12:25:18 PM »

This is going to be a very sad Mother's Day Weekend for all of those involved in this tragedy as well as the whole community.  I don't think people will feel much better for quite some time.  Perhaps once there is a trial it will bring some degree of closure, scant though it might be.


I so agree with you, Mother's Day will never be the same for Sandra's mom, and so many other mom's who have lost their child, very sad indeed.
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« Reply #351 on: May 09, 2009, 12:28:46 PM »

JessStar~  I agree with your comment "who could blame her.."  I understand why Sandra's mom wants to move from the mobile home park.  Maybe if she moved, it would help her on the road to healing.  I cannot imagine what Sandra's family is going through.    
I can't blame the family for wanting to move either, everywhere they look their are memories of Sandra. In a way one might want to stay because they feel Sandra's presence, very hard decision I'm sure to come to.
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« Reply #352 on: May 09, 2009, 09:10:02 PM »

JessStar~  I agree with your comment "who could blame her.."  I understand why Sandra's mom wants to move from the mobile home park.  Maybe if she moved, it would help her on the road to healing.  I cannot imagine what Sandra's family is going through.    
I can't blame the family for wanting to move either, everywhere they look their are memories of Sandra. In a way one might want to stay because they feel Sandra's presence, very hard decision I'm sure to come to.

I would move as well...just driving past Melissa's house would bring it all back again...
poor woman...how very sad for her and her family...
and how sad for Melissa's little girl who is also innocent in all of this who no longer has her mom? wonder if she knows anything yet....poor little one...always the children who suffer...
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« Reply #353 on: May 10, 2009, 11:27:00 AM »



Love,
Dolce + 2
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« Reply #354 on: May 10, 2009, 06:05:00 PM »

I'm thinking of Sandra's family on this Mother's Day.  I just can't imagine. 

Happy Mother's Day to all.  an angelic monkey

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« Reply #355 on: May 10, 2009, 08:55:46 PM »

DANA PRETZER IN ABOUT 5 MINUTES - GOING TO BE A GREAT SHOW!

http://scaredmonkeysradio.com/radio.m3u

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« Reply #356 on: May 11, 2009, 08:16:03 PM »

Correct me if wrong, but didn't Sandra have a sister???
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« Reply #357 on: May 11, 2009, 08:23:54 PM »

Correct me if wrong, but didn't Sandra have a sister???

She has 2 sisters, both older (one I think is 10, the other in late teens, I believe) and a younger brother.
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Tracygirl
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« Reply #358 on: May 11, 2009, 09:21:36 PM »

Her brother is older, I think the oldest. Sandra was the baby
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« Reply #359 on: May 11, 2009, 10:29:40 PM »

Her brother is older, I think the oldest. Sandra was the baby

Yes, Sandra was the baby. Simone is 20, Thomas is 15 and Miranda is 11.

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