CLEVELAND, Ohio– The abandoned East Side house where the body of 14-year-old Alianna DeFreeze was found dead last week has become a makeshift memorial to the young girl, with teddy bears, balloons, candles and flowers overflowing its gray porch steps.
While the items were left with love, it’s not a place where the child’s family wants her to be remembered, or to have to visit to gather the mementos, Alianna’s mother said Saturday.
Alianna DeFreeze
Donnesha Cooper told The Plain Dealer that the family appreciates the “outpouring of support and love from everyone in the community,” but would like Alianna to be remembered only in places that she loved, not at “the house where her death took place.”
Alianna disappeared while transferring buses as she was going to school at the E Prep & Village Prep Woodland Hills Campus Jan. 26. She wasn’t seen again until Sunday evening, when Cleveland police officers found her body in an abandoned house in the 9400 block of Fuller Avenue.
Saturday morning, a $3 million bond was set for the man charged with Alianna’s death, who appeared for the first time in the court of Cleveland Municipal Judge Michael Sliwinski after his arrest on Thursday. Christopher Whitaker, of South Euclid, is charged with aggravated murder.
After a march to thank Fourth District police for their work in Alianna’s case and a vigil remembering the girl Saturday afternoon, memorial items were gathered from attendees.
The family is grateful for them, Cooper said. Alianna’s two-year-old brother has been playing with the teddy bears. But many items remain at the Fuller house, and Alianna’s family would rather not return there again.
The family asks that anyone wishing to remember Alianna with mementos leave them in places that the girl loved, or at her schools, E Prep at the corner of East 93rd Street and Union Avenue, or Andrew J. Rickoff Elementary on East 147th Street in Cleveland.
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