Teen arrested for death, rape of 6-year-old Bremerton girl, authorities say

[moriah]

16. Apparently she had a history of waking up before everyone else....

... and running to a neighbor's house to play. They sent their 12-year-old out about noon to look for her sister, and per articles she was told, and other people have since said to investigators, that they thought they saw the little girl Sunday afternoon playing. Reassured that she'd been seen, they expected her in by dinner. Apparently she often ate lunch or snacks with neighbor kids. When she didn't show for supper, they started looking for her, and called the cops when they'd searched about an hour and a half.

It is plausible -- I nearly burned down the house when I was almost three and woke up before everyone else. After that, I was told if I woke up to run next door to my grandmother's house, and another neighbor would also babysit for me on such impromptu occasions as me showing up at her doorstep to get a cookie. This was also in a very small trailer park, well outside the city limits. Things changed rapidly when we moved to the city and in with my other set of grandparents. Granny woke up at 5 AM every morning to make sure I was supervised, and then when I kept running off from my grandfather with emphysema to go ring neighbor's doorbells (I liked cookies) they put me in daycare until my attention span was longer and I would remember for more than 20 minutes at a time that I couldn't run off like that anymore.

I don't like to tear down victims of a tragedy, but this is the exact way this type of thing can happen. Kid is routinely left "free-range" too young and too long, and other people start to notice. There are articles showing that neighbors saw this kid wandering barefoot at all hours from the time she was four. Instead of being "busybodies" and calling the cops or CPS, the neighbors tried to step in where they could. It wasn't enough, and some pervert saw this bright-eyed kid who had never known a stranger dangled under their nose, befriended her, gained her trust, and murdered her.