NEW YORK (AP) — Clutching a goodbye card, a 4-year-old girl whose tragic story captured the city's collective heart attended a funeral Mass on Friday for her mother, whose battered body was found in a landfill.
Monica Lozada-Rivadineira was mourned almost seven weeks after her daughter, Valery, was found wandering a Queens neighborhood in the middle of the night, alone, barefoot and frightened.
Police learned the girl's identity and began unraveling her mother's slaying days later, after authorities put Valery on television and she described her mother as looking "like a princess."
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After the Mass at Our Lady of Loreto Church in Brooklyn, the coffin was cracked open wide enough for Valery to slip her card inside.