Lily Burk and Charles Samuel walked in separate worlds.
Burk was a bright, bookish 17-year-old, whose future was ahead of her. After a summer in which she was to appear on stage as the lead in a play and volunteer at a skid row needle exchange program, she was to have started her final year of high school.
Samuel, 50, had been in and out of prisons for decades. He was a transient with a long record of criminal activities and drug abuse.
Friday, on a hot, bright afternoon, chance brought the two together on a quiet, tree-lined street.
Burk walked down Wilshire Place about 3 p.m., leaving the former Bullock's Wilshire department store that today is home to Southwestern University School of Law. Under her arm, she carried a box of paperwork that her mother, who taught at the school, had asked her to pick up.
Samuel had walked out of a nearby residential drug treatment program earlier in the afternoon. He had been ordered there after a recent arrest but had been given permission to leave for the day.
As Burk approached her Volvo sedan near 7th Street, Samuel confronted her. Moments later the car drove off -- a security video shows Samuel behind the wheel and Burk in the passenger seat, but it does not capture the exact moment of the alleged abduction.
By dusk, Burk was dead, her body left in her car in a downtown parking lot -- her head beaten and her neck slashed, according to Los Angeles police and other law enforcement officials. Samuel killed her, police suspect, during a botched robbery. He was arrested within 90 minutes of her death on an unrelated charge and was held in custody.
On Sunday, fingerprints linked him to the young woman's death, and he was arrested again late that night on suspicion of murder and is being held without bail.
The alleged abduction and killing of a teenage girl, rare for its apparent randomness even in a metropolis like Los Angeles, jolted the city over the weekend, leaving parents to second-guess when they can ever fully trust that their children are safe.
"This could have been you, it could have been your daughter, and that is what drives it home," said Los Angeles Police Department First Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell. Veteran LAPD homicide detectives could not recall the last time a teen in the city was abducted by a stranger and killed.
