Body of Missing 5-Year-Old Girl Found : Crime: Grandmother and aunt of child are arrested after saying she drowned in a bathtub. The family earlier had said she disappeared from a shopping mall.

ONTARIO —  The body of a 5-year-old girl reported missing from a Culver City mall last week was found in the desert near Victorville Tuesday morning and her grandmother and aunt were placed under arrest.

Culver City Police Chief Ted Cooke said the family’s story that little Marquishia ShaneeCandler had disappeared during a shopping trip to the Fox Hills Mall was a fabrication.

The grandmother and aunt have since told police that the child accidentally drowned in a bathtub at her grandmother’s home in Ontario, investigators said. There have been allegations that the girl previously was a victim of abuse while in the custody of her grandmother, police said.

Investigators said Marquishia probably died on Sept. 22, the day before Culver City police were told that she was missing. An autopsy will be performed to determine the cause of death, police said.

The aunt, Renee Lloyd, 32, was booked at the Ontario Police Department Jail Tuesday morning on suspicion of murder. The grandmother, Bertha Toombs, 49--who had appeared on television to ask for help in finding the missing girl--was booked at the same jail on suspicion of being an accessory to the crime.

“Admissions by the aunt and grandmother led to the recovery of the body,” Culver City Police Sgt. Dave Padora said.

Padora said the aunt directed officers to a stretch of Highway 247 about 20 miles east of Victorville, where the child’s naked body was found at about 7:20 a.m. in some brush beside the road.

The discovery of the body came about eight hours after The Times and KCBS-TV reported erroneously that the girl had been found alive after she was spotted by a security guard at a fast-food restaurant at Crenshaw Boulevard and Slauson Avenue in Los Angeles. The guard, former Los Angeles Police Officer Mitchell Grace, said Tuesday that it was a case of mistaken identity, and police said he apparently is not involved in the case.

Cooke said his department knew that the media accounts were incorrect, but that it wasn’t the department’s responsibility to correct erroneous news reports.

Investigators said that because Marquishia’s mother lives in a drug-rehabilitation halfway house and her father is in state prison, custody of the little girl and four of her siblings had been awarded to her grandmother. Officials said Marquishia, her brothers and sisters and four cousins were all living in Ontario with Toombs, who was receiving public funds to care for them as a foster parent.

Culver City Detective Sgt. Hank Davies said an allegation that Marquishia had been abused was filed by medical personnel in May, 1991, after the child was taken to a hospital in San Bernardino County with a broken leg.

Toombs said the girl had fallen from a swing, police said. But Davies said doctors became suspicious when they discovered signs of earlier bone fractures.

Davies said Toombs told him that Ontario police questioned her and told her that if there were any similar allegations, all of the children would be removed from her home. Davies said he could find no evidence that any action had been taken against Toombs in that case.

Pat Wolff, a spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County Department of Public Social Services, said confidentiality laws prevented her from discussing the case or even confirming that the children were placed in Toombs’ home by the agency.

Wolff said Toombs did not have a foster-care license, but added that a person does not need a license to care for relatives.

Dorothy Durston, 33, who knew several of the children as a neighbor and an aide at their elementary school, said she had reported to authorities that she thought two of the foster children--Marquishia and a 5-year-old boy--were victims of abuse.

Durston said that last year, when the boy arrived at school with a lump on his head, she asked him what had happened.

“He said that he was really bad at home, and his grandmother grabbed him by the arm and threw him against the wall,” Durston said.

The school principal was notified, Durston said, “and someone was supposed to go and check it out.”

Durston said that in recent months, she noticed that Marquishia, who was painfully thin, was eating the lunchtime scraps left by other kindergarten students. Durston said that when she asked Marquishia about it, the little girl said that her aunt wasn’t feeding her breakfast.

About two months ago, Durston said, she realized that she hadn’t seen Marquishia for several weeks. The school aide said that when she saw the girl again, in mid-August, she asked Marquishia whether she had been ill.

“She said, ‘No, my auntie locked me in the bathroom . . . because I was so bad,’ ” Durston said.

Durston said she reported the girl’s account to a teacher, but the teacher thought the girl “was just telling stories.”

Police said Lloyd has told them that on the night of Sept. 22, she left Marquishia unattended in a bathtub for 30 or 40 minutes and came back to find her drowned.

Davies said Lloyd told him that she panicked and didn’t call authorities because she feared they would dredge up the allegation that she had abused Marquishia last year and would take all of the children from her mother’s custody.

Three hours after the child’s death, Lloyd, acting alone, drove to the desert and dumped the body behind a clump of bushes within sight of the road, Davies said.

The next day, Culver City police said, five of the children were with Toombs and Lloyd when the women reported Marquishia missing.

Davies said that Marquishia’s elder sister, a 6-year-old, told investigators that Marquishia was with the family at the mall, but he believed she had been coached to do so.

“I don’t believe any of the children consciously lied, “ he said.

Davies said he does not believe any of the children knew Marquishia was dead.

Culver City police said that when their repeated searches failed to find Marquishia, they summoned Lloyd and Toombs to the Culver City station Monday afternoon for further questioning.

At first, Davies said, the two women stuck to their original story. But after Lloyd failed a lie-detector test, both women, in separate interviews, admitted that Marquishia was dead.

Davies said Lloyd could not remember the exact spot where she had dumped the body, but she led officers to the general area. Eight hours later, after the sun had risen, the body was discovered about five feet from the road.

Katz reported from Ontario and Ford from Culver City. The story was written by Times staff writer Eric Malnic.