A tearful farewell to Maria

An emotional farewell was held Wednesday for the young girl who was gunned down on the sidewalk outside her house, apparently by gang members, earlier this week.

As the casket holding the body of a 7-year-old Maria Del Carmen Menchaca was lowered into the ground, the girl's mother broke down, crying in near hysterics, and collapsed. Several people came to her aid to help her to her feet again.

"My daughter," Carmen Santos cried in Spanish. "I don't want to leave her alone. She's going to be scared. I don't want to leave her here."

Several people cried out in agony as they paid their final respects to the girl, including her father, Gilbert Menchaca, who had a look of disbelief and wracked emotion on his face during the entire funeral service and frequently looked down at his feet and shook his head.

Ironically, Menchaca's burial at Elysian Burial Gardens, near 4500 South and 1300 East, was just a short walk across the lawn from where just three months earlier another 7-year-old girl, Hser Ner Moo, was laid to rest after being abducted and killed in her South Salt Lake apartment complex.

Unlike Moo's funeral service, however, in which hundreds of people — many of whom did not even know the young girl — attended, only a small group were present Wednesday to bid farewell to Menchaca.

Fewer than 100 people — mostly friends and family — filled only half of the small Sacred Heart Catholic Church on the corner of 200 East and 900 South. Only between 20 to 30 attended the graveside burial. But co-workers of Gilbert Menchaca said the father was grateful for all the support he received.

Menchaca was at work at the downtown Olive Garden when he received the news his daughter had been shot.

"He had nothing to do with gangs. He loves his family. He's always talking about his family. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time," said Tomas Chino, a friend and co-worker of Menchaca. "I couldn't imagine losing a daughter to something that stupid. It's stupidity ... If I lost my daughter, I would lose my mind."

Chino said Maria's father worked two jobs to support his family. Police, however, said there was a person inside the house who was a gang member and had an ongoing dispute with a rival gang that turned violent on Sunday.

Maria was killed in front of her Glendale home at 800 West and Fremont Avenue (1100 South) as she played outside.

A black SUV drove by and someone inside the car fired a shot in what police termed a gang dispute directed at someone in Maria's house.