Over a hundred people took tothe streets in south Los Angeles on Sunday night to honour a 62-year-old woman killed during a mugging.
Maria Elena Rivas was stabbed to death on December 22 at Catalina Ave. and Adams Blvd. by a man who wanted her purse.
Those who knew Rivas remembered her as a sweet and generous woman.
"She always offered a plate of food," neighbour Melissa Monge recounted to CBS Los Angeles. "She was always happy. She was very reserved and shy, but she was a humble human being and she never took anything from anyone."
The assailant is still at large, and the LAPD is asking for witnesses and those with information on the case to come forward.
Over in Mississippi, police are still searching for clues in the case of 19-year-old Jessica Chambers, found burned alive outside of her car in Panola on December 6.
The former softball player and cheerleader told her mother that she was going to buy something to eat and clean out her car on Saturday around 6pm.
Surveillance footage shows the teen putting gas in her car that night, and talking on her cell phone at the gas station. Chambers was familiar with the station attendant, and told him that she was going to make a stop before going home.
About an hour later, she was attacked.
"They squirted lighter fluid down her throat and in her nose, and apparently they knocked her out," her father, Ben Chambers, explained. "She had a big gash on top of her head."
Chambers and her car were set on fire.
Panola County Sheriff Dennis Darby told The Clarion-Ledger that his department is getting close to identifying "possible people of interest that could lead us somewhere better than where we are." The reward for information leading to an arrest in the case is now $17,800.
