The first officer to spot the 8-year-old girl buried upside down under chunks of concrete in a Lake Worth recycling bin saw no signs of life.
Her hand and foot protruded from the rubble, but the Delray Beach girl — who had been sexually assaulted, choked and beaten — didn’t respond as a police sergeant yelled to her and shook the bin, according to police reports released Thursday.
It wasn’t until a lieutenant arrived and looked into the bin that her fingers moved, the reports said.
“How did you find me?” the girl whispered to Detective Donna Murphy after officers removed concrete debris weighing up to 72 pounds and got her out of the bin, which had been placed inside a Dumpster at a defunct landfill, the documents said.
The rescue, about seven hours after the girl was reported missing from her godmother’s Lake Worth home May 22, came as her life was slipping away.
“Basically her body was preparing to die and began shutting down,” Dr. Philip Colaizzo, medical director of the Child Protection Team of Palm Beach, was quoted as saying in a report. Her vital signs were at “a very critical level” even after she had been stabilized at St. Mary’s Medical Center, the report said.
Before she was taken to the hospital, the girl told police a man she knew grabbed her by the neck the night before.
“He raped me,” she said. “His name is Milagro, but they call him M.J.”
Prosecutors have charged Milagro Cunningham, 17, as an adult with six felony counts in the attack on the girl, including attempted first-degree murder and sexual battery on a person younger than 12. He is being held without bail and faces up to life in prison if convicted.
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel is not identifying the girl because of her age and the nature of the charges.
The documents released Thursday detail a savage attack by a teen staying in the same home where the girl was visiting for the weekend.
“I was sleeping with the 1-year-old baby. It was late at night,” the girl said at the hospital, according to the report. “He came into my bedroom and started to touch me. He grabbed me by the mouth and took me from the house to the park. He raped me. At the end, he tried to kill me.”
Cunningham choked the girl four or five times before putting her in the trash container, she told police.
“I had white and butterflies panties with rainbow colors on. I had blue shorts,” the report quotes the girl as saying. “He broke them off. … He said that I was going to die. He was punching me in my face. He said if I say anything he is going to kill me with a knife.”
Investigators found a pair of underpants matching that description on an access road to the landfill and found a broken knife with 5-inch blade in the driveway of the godmother’s home, according to the reports.
The girl was found partially clothed, her body battered and swollen. There was what appeared to be the impression of a footprint on her back, according to the documents.
Cunningham initially told police a white man entered the home and abducted the girl, but later confessed to the attack, according to police reports. A transcript of a confession was not among the documents released Thursday.
Cunningham, a native of the Bahamas who authorities say was in the country illegally after being sent to stay with his aunt and uncle in Lake Worth, was arrested three times on burglary charges, law enforcement records show.
He was suspended from John I. Leonard High School in Greenacres in August for allegedly battering a female teacher after she found him in the girl’s bathroom, another report says.
A woman who told Lake Worth police she was Cunningham’s legal guardian — her name was deleted from the report — said about three years ago the teen tied up her 3-year-old son and placed him in a shopping bag because he was angry with her.
By John Cote, Sun Sentinel
