Story By: Juan Mayes, Sub-Editor: Joana Mihajlovska, Agency:  Newsflash

Thirty women have clubbed together to give a funeral to a disabled girl found dead in an icebox whose body was never claimed and seemed destined for a mass grave.

The girl’s funeral took place in the city of Tijuana in the Mexican border state of Baja California on 14th December.

A group of 30 local women, together with the Angel Smiles Civil Association, were able to get custody of the body from the State Prosecutor’s Office to avoid her being placed in a common grave by the authorities.

The images show the funeral held to give the young girl, reportedly thought to be aged 10 or less, according to local sources, a proper goodbye.

The girl was found inside an icebox in the neighbourhood of El Pipila in Tijuana at the end of August this year.

Reports said nobody claimed the victim’s body, but after the news made local headlines the women banded together and planned an appropriate send-off.

The volunteers affectionately named her Dulce Maria and buried her at a local cemetery in Tijuana.

One of the women who helped to organise the funeral, Yesica Garcia Lerma, was saddened that no one from the girl’s family or neighbours came forwards to claim her body.

She said: “We shouldn’t have to do nice things [for children] when they are gone, but when they are alive.”

According to an autopsy report, the girl’s body was not found with injuries, but did present signs of infantile cerebral palsy and her cause of death was deemed to be sepsis caused by pneumonia.

An investigation into the girl’s death is still ongoing.

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