New York – The grandmother of a 4-year-old girl found wandering a street after her mother vanished plans to travel from Bolivia to reunite with the girl, the Bolivian consul general said Tuesday.
Roxana Rivadineira, who is awaiting a travel visa at the American consulate in La Paz, also is holding out hope for her missing daughter, said Consul General Jorge Heredia.
The girl, Valery Belen Saavedra Lozada, has been in foster care in New York since the disappearance of her mother, Monica Lozada-Rivadineira, on Sept. 24.
The mother’s companion, Cesar Ascarrunz, 32, is being held on a murder charge.
According to a criminal complaint, Ascarrunz choked Lozada-Rivadineira, 26, put her body in a plastic bag and left it in their apartment for two days. On Sept. 26, he dumped the body in a pile of trash on a street corner, the complaint said.
The only relatives Valery has seen since she was found barefoot in the middle of the night are her grandmother’s brother, Enrique Salas, and his daughter.
