ALBUQUERQUE — Police are trying to unravel the mystery of how the unidentified body of a small boy wound up buried in an Albuquerque playground after a preliminary autopsy provided no clues about how the child died.
“There were no obvious signs or cause of death,” Albuquerque police spokesman John Walsh said Saturday after receiving the results of a preliminary autopsy from the state Office of the Medical Investigator.
Saddened neighbors made a makeshift memorial of stuffed teddy bears, toy trucks and flowers at the base of the playground equipment at Alvarado Park in northeast Albuquerque and planned to hold a candlelit memorial for the boy in the park Saturday night.
About 50 police investigators who went door-to-door Saturday asking neighbors for help in identifying the 3- to 5-year-old boy also came up empty-handed, Walsh said.
“No one has stepped forward as parent, guardian or caretaker or any other relationship with this child,” Walsh said.
The officers fanned out into neighborhoods farther from the park where the body was found Friday afternoon. A mother there with her children spotted a shoe sticking out of the sand and called police after making the grim discovery.
The 38-pound boy was wearing a red shirt with the image of a four-wheel-drive truck on the front, black nylon pants with red stripes and black shoes. He had short straight black hair and was 3 feet, 2 inches tall, according to Walsh.
Walsh said the preliminary autopsy determine the child was either “Native American or Hispanic.”
