Fifteen-year-old Adrian Jerry Gonzalez has been charged as an adult in the horrific rape and killing of 8-year-old Maddy Middleton in Santa Cruz this week.
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Sunday night: Santa Cruz police, a Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue Team and volunteers search for Maddy at the Tannery, along the San Lorenzo River and nearby beaches.
Gonzalez also faces charges of two special circumstances involving sexual offense, kidnapping and lying in wait, Rosell said.
The suspect was being held in the Santa Cruz County Juvenile Detention Center, according to Vogel, who said he did not know about any history of mental illness for the boy.
Vogel told reporters Tuesday that Madyson Middleton went willingly into the teenager’s apartment and was probably dead even before she was reported missing Sunday evening.
“We are going to bring him to justice”, Rossell said, according to local TV station KSBW.
Late afternoon on Monday, July 27, at approximately 7:55 p.m., a Santa Cruz Police detective discovered the body of Middleton at the bottom of a large dumpster-sized recycle bin on the ground floor of the complex.
Among the portraits of him outside the Tannery and showing off Yo-Yo tricks in an apartment, a post from Sunday, the day Maddy was killed, shows a close-up, black-and-white photo of hands playing a piano. Investigators found evidence in the apartment linking him to the crime.
The district is offering counseling services today and Thursday at the school for students, families and staff, Munro said.
Lisa Silas, a sculptor and painter who lives at the complex, called it “the biggest tragedy any family or any neighborhood has had”.
“They were alone in the apartment”, the chief said. She and the boy lived at the center, a mixed-used creative space providing affordable housing to artists.
The boy was close to the bin when the body was found, and he was taken into custody nearly immediately, the chief said.
Rosell declined to comment on details about the crime, saying further information would come out as the case proceeds in the court system.
Residents have been heartbroken to learn that he is suspected in the death, he said.
And KRON 4 is now reporting that Middleton was duct-taped during the sexual assault, and she was both strangled and stabbed. “Sometimes we understand them, sometimes we don’t”. They say Maddy was tied up or bound during the attack.
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The residents of the Tannery Arts Center, a building where the victim and the suspect lived, can’t believe the terrible news that has befallen on their little community.
