Tears, shock after Frankford girl's suicide
Pamela Flores family still cant fathom what would impel her to jump to her death.
IT TAKES about an hour to walk the 2 1/2 miles from the Monegro family's house in Frankford to the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge. It's out of the way, a trip few would make on foot.
So when Daniel Monegro saw his second-oldest daughter, Pamela Flores, trekking up Oakland Street early on Oct. 27, he thought she was about to walk the five blocks separating their home from Frankford High School, where Pamela started her freshman year in September.
"Hurry up, you'll be late," Monegro told his daughter.
"OK, Daddy," she replied.
Flores, 14, never made it to school. She took a winding path to the bridge connecting Philly to Burlington County and jumped over its railing, according to police.
Eight days later, a family fishing in the river found her body.
"It's very hard. It's the most difficult thing to do in your life," Monegro, 50, told the Daily News last night, hours after he identified Flores' body in the Medical Examiner's Office.
"I never thought I'd have to go identify one of my children. I always figured one day they'd identify me."
Jeff Moran, a spokesman for the Medical Examiner's Office, confirmed that the body pulled from the Delaware River by police Wednesday was Monegro's. Her death was ruled a suicide by drowning.
"For me, the entire time I was in shock," said Alba Flores, Pamela's older sister. "I didn't want to believe it, and I still don't."
As she spoke last night, Alba Flores clutched her sister's iPhone. A man who owns a storage facility near the bridge found it, along with her backpack, the day Pamela went missing.
It serves as an electronic memorial for the late teen, filled with selfies and goofy videos. One recorded Oct. 25 shows Flores laughing, mugging for the camera in a platinum-blond wig.
"When you look at these pictures, you see her character shine through," her sister said last night. "She was so happy and carefree. I never thought this was something she would do.
"It's hard to believe she was in so much pain."
The reality was hard for the family to accept, even after watching surveillance footage from the bridge provided by investigators:
In the moments before she jumped, Flores paced back and forth, stopping intermittently, her sister said.
It's as if, she added, the teen didn't know what to do.
Now, neither do the people she left behind.
"She was a good kid," Daniel Monegro said. "She never made me angry or did anything to make me worry."
That terrible day was her first absence from school, where she had been an excellent student since classes started.
Monegro often asked Flores if she was happy in Philly - the family had moved from their old neighborhood in the Bronx about two years ago. She always assured him she was, and he said he never saw any reason to doubt her.
"I'll just miss her," he said. "We all will."
Flores' funeral will be held from 2 to 5 p.m. tomorrow at the Guckin Funeral Mansion, G Street near Thayer, Kensington.
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