Dad finds daughter, 11, dead after she texts about stranger

A Texas dad came home to find his 11-year-old daughter had been raped and left dead under his bed — some five hours after she alerted him to a stranger at their door, according to cops and the grieving dad.

Carmelo Gonzalez, 32, told FOX 26 he had not long arrived at work at 10 a.m. Saturday when he got a text from his daughter Maria to say someone was knocking at their door in Pasadena.

“I told her, ‘Don’t open the door because I am arriving at work,’ and she responded, ‘I am in my bed,’” Gonzalez said of the “good, quiet girl” who only recently turned 11.

The dad later asked relatives who live in the same building “to go check on [her] because he hadn’t heard from her,” Pasadena Police Chief Josh Bruegger told a press conference Tuesday.

An aunt and uncle found the door open — but “were unable to locate her” after “a cursory check,” the police chief said. 

When Gonzalez got home around 3 p.m. — about five hours after his daughter’s alarming warning — he found her lifeless body inside a laundry basket under his bed.

“They left her under the bed in a plastic bag. They left my poor daughter,” Gonzalez told the local outlet. 

The 11-year-old was sexually assaulted before being strangled, the police chief said, saying that the young girl also suffered blunt force trauma to the head. The Pasadena Medical Examiner confirmed that Maria had been raped and strangled, Fox 26 said.

Investigators do not have any suspects for the “violent, violent crime,” said the police chief, revealing that some people had volunteered DNA to be cleared.

“At this point, the father’s alibi checks out, so he is — at this point, at least — not a suspect,” Bruegger said.

Dad and daughter lived alone in the apartment, with the dead girl’s mom believed to be in Guatemala, the chief said.

“I do not know their legal status,” the police chief said of the family, stressing that “it’s the least of our concerns at this point.”

The home showed no signs of forced entry, and the door was closed but unlocked when Maria’s aunt and uncle first checked out the scene.

The apartment area has security cameras but they may not have been recording due to recent storms, the chief suggested.

The killer likely knew that the little girl was home alone at the time, Bruegger suggested.

“It seems awfully suspicious that dad leaves for work and within 30 minutes you’ve got somebody knocking at the door,” the police chief noted.