Jogger's mom: Don't forget my daughter
The mother of the jogger slain last weekend in Manhattan's Central Park arrived in New York City from Brazil Friday and made a tearful plea that her daughter's death not be in vain. 'Please, do not forget her death,' Lidia Pinto Machado said at a news conference in City Hall. 'Please, help. Please, write about it, talk about it.' Pinto, wearing black and crying throughout, said her daughter Maria Izavel Monteiro Alves loved the park where she was beaten to death, and possibly sexually abused, by an unknown assailant. 'She enjoyed nature. She used to tell us that when it rained, the park was even more beautiful,' she said. She added that Monteiro, who left Brazil two decades ago, wanted to return 'but she knew she had more opportunities in New York...She had many friends in New York.' Monteiro, 44, worked in an upscale Madison Avenue shoe boutique. Police say that on Sunday she went jogging at her usual time of 6 a.m. and was dragged off the path and viciously attacked, her head bashed in and her bloodied body dumped in a stream. She was identified on Monday and her mother and sister-in-law flew into New York from Rio de Janeiro Friday morning to claim her body and return it to Brazil for burial. 'You have no idea how much I'm suffering,' Pinto said. 'I will take my daughter back and try to survive without her.' Pinto thanked New Yorkers for their generosity, the press for its interest in the case, and police for their massive investigation, one of the biggest manhunts in the city in recent memory.