Killer's car may have dragged teen for miles
LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- A 17-year-old girl whose body was discovered on a neighborhood street east of Los Angeles was murdered at a nearby lover's lane and her body dragged five miles (eight km), possibly by her killer's vehicle, police said Sunday.
Investigators initially believed the girl was the victim of a hit-and-run driver when her body was found early Saturday in Hacienda Heights, about 20 miles (30 km) east of Los Angeles.
A trail of blood from the victim's body led investigators to an empty stretch of canyon road known to local teens as a lover's lane, police said.
Police said they found a pool of blood and other clues that indicated the girl was murdered and, her body wedged under the vehicle's chassis, inadvertently dragged to the street where she was found.
An autopsy was being performed Sunday on the teen-ager, whose identity was not made public because her family had not been notified, a sheriff's department spokesman said.
The cause of the girl's death was not immediately evident, the spokesman said.
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