Boy’s Killer One-Armed, Police Say

A one-armed man was accused Monday of killing a 12-year-old boy whose body was cut into pieces and encased in chunks of concrete.

Six other people who had been taken into custody over the weekend for investigation of murder in the slaying of Juan Delgado were freed after police concluded they weren’t involved.

John Samuel Ghobrial, 27, remained in custody and will be charged with murder, Capt. John Rees said.

Police said the one-armed Ghobrial suffocated the boy, cut up the body, entombed some of pieces in chunks of concrete - one of them weighing 200 pounds - and scattered the parts.

When asked how a one-armed man could have done such a thing, the police captain said: “We are wrestling with this all the time.” But he added, “We don’t have evidence to support a second person.”

“To accept that, while difficult or implausible to some degree, is not impossible,” Rees said.

Rees said investigators have no motive yet and do not know if the boy was sexually assaulted because his pelvic section is still missing.

The boy didn’t come home after school on Tuesday, but his mother didn’t report him missing until Thursday because, she said, he was known to stay away from home for days at a time.

“When the police came, I fell to the ground. I cried: ‘No, tell me God! Please, Virgin Maria, tell me it’s not my son!”’ Marguerita Delgado said.

A man upset that someone had dumped trash on his property went to investigate Saturday and found blood oozing from a block of concrete.

Hours later, a second concrete block containing more body parts was discovered less than a half-mile away in this suburb 20 miles southeast of Los Angeles.