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Oscar Botello-Gonzales' eyes lit up when he saw the wrapped presents and packages being dropped in the middle of his living room.
"Yaaah," the 4-year-old said. "Feliz Navidad."
On Tuesday, representatives of the Ark of Little Cottonwood, a treatment center for people with addiction and mental illness, delivered toys and clothes to Oscar, his 2-year-old sister Heidi and his 9-year-old brother Alexis. The children's mother, Margarita Gonzales, hugged Oscar and explained through interpreter Adam Bashore that she was overwhelmed by the gifts. The family has fallen on hard times since the murder of her husband, Oscar Botello.
The 29-year-old Mexican immigrant was found dead in February 2007 inside a burned sport utility vehicle in Tooele County. Investigators found his body in the back of the SUV off Interstate 80 near the Delle exit, about 50 miles west of Salt Lake City. No arrests were ever made.
"It's very difficult," Margarita Gonzales told Bashore. "Her kids ask about him a lot."
Lt. Travis Scharmann, the lead investigator in Botello's murder, said the case is cold. The only witness to the crime, Julio Caesar Garcia Rodriguez, who was also burned in the car but survived, has returned to Mexico.
"We had good leads at the start but they didn't pan out," Scharmann said.
Now, two years later, the Gonzales family's Salt Lake City basement apartment is sparingly furnished with two couches, a television and a small Christmas tree.
Alexis said he was sad his dad wasn't alive to celebrate the holidays.
He also said he had been a good boy this year, "pretty much."
"It's very nice to have all these presents here," he said.
Last year, the family spent "a simple Christmas" in Oregon with Gonzales' brother, she said.
"It would have been a very different Christmas without these things," she said of the newly arrived gifts.
Most of the presents were purchased for the kids, but Ark representatives gave Gonzales a $100 gift certificate to Macy's.
Gloria Boberg, the Ark's executive director for the past 12 years, said she grew up poor in the same neighborhood the Gonzaleses live in near 1750 West and 400 North. She said she remembers being in the fourth grade "and there was nothing, nothing in the house on Christmas eve."
Fortunately, her neighbors, Leona and Floyd Hancock, knocked on her door about 1:30 a.m. on Christmas and left presents for her family that year. She never forgot it.
The Ark delivered gifts to 380 children last year and 152 this year, she said.
When Alexis was asked Tuesday what kind of toys he wanted for Christmas, he politely responded, "any kind."