EVERETT – Sirita Jimmina Sotelo was a fashion princess who loved “pretties” in her hair and singing songs about Jesus.
Michael V. Martina / The Herald
She liked to help out in the kitchen and could point out Mars in the night sky.
These were the memories that family and friends shared as they gathered for the 4-year-old girl’s funeral Tuesday.
Paramedics found Sirita dead in her bedroom Jan. 21. She was living with her father and stepmother in their Lake Stevens home.
The little girl died of injuries to her head and torso. Snohomish County sheriff’s detectives continue to investigate the death as a homicide. No one has been arrested.
About 100 people filled the pews inside the funeral chapel Tuesday.
Family members from California flew in for the service and held tight to Sirita’s mother, Patricia Sotelo.
Sotelo, 40, was released from jail Tuesday to attend the funeral. She is serving time for drug convictions. She hadn’t seen her daughter since July.
Sotelo clung to the little girl’s small, white coffin.
“I just want to hold my girl. I just want to kiss my baby,” she pleaded.
Sotelo said her daughter was smart and funny. She denied that Sirita was a problem child with emotional and mental difficulties, contradicting what the girl’s stepmother told police the night of her death, according to court documents.
Sotelo cried out for answers, during the funeral asking the girl’s father, John Ewell, to tell her what happened to their daughter.
“I want justice. I won’t stop until we find out what happened to my angel girl,” she said later at the cemetery.
Investigators have questioned Ewell and his wife about the hours leading up to Sirita’s death. The couple have four children also living with them.
Ewell’s wife told police that Sirita had urinated and defecated in her pants and she gave her a shower, court documents said.
She reported that Sirita fell and hit her head when she was getting dressed. She later said the girl hit her head in the shower.
That night the stepmother’s sister called a poison control hotline to report that Sirita possibly ingested a small amount of glue gun cleaner, a search warrant said. The girl complained of a stomachache, the woman told police.
Sirita’s stepmother told investigators she checked on the girl 20 minutes before she entered the room again to find her deceased. Sirita was cold to the touch when paramedics arrived, court records said.
Sirita, who would have turned 5 this month, had been in and out of foster care most of her young life.
She lived with a foster family until November 2003, when her father was awarded custody of the girl.
“What Sirita wanted more than anything else was a place to call home,” said her former foster dad Gary. “She is finally home.”
Gary asked The Herald to withhold his last name to protect the foster children living with him and his wife.
Gary also refuted that Sirita was a problem child. She needed stability, he said. Gary and his wife had hoped to adopt Sirita.
He plans to lobby for children like Sirita, the girl he called “Boo Boo.”
Gary asked the congregation to sing one of Sirita’s favorite songs, “Jesus Loves Me.”
She knew all three verses, including the last, which ends, “If I love Him when I die, He will take me home on high.”
“I had no idea when I taught her that verse, I was preparing her for something,” he said.
Reporter Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463 or hefley@heraldnet.com.
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