Kansas City, Mo. ? Children danced and sang not far from a wooded area where a 3-year-old girl was found slain eight years ago.

Community members have said they want this site to move past the “dumping ground” image it has fought to shake in the years since Erica Green’s death. The scene Saturday seemed a fitting start to their hopeful wishes.

About 200 people attended a unity march and prayer hour in memory of Erica, who was known for years only as “Precious Doe.” The crowd included detectives and prosecutors who worked on the case, activists who kept attention on it, and residents whose connection to Erica grew out of their sadness and frustration over her killing.

“As we gather here today as family under that one creator, let’s continue to not only keep our children in our prayers but to reach out to them,” community activist Alvin Brooks said. “If there’s someone in the neighborhood or on the block who we think is misusing a child, we need to say something about it.”

For more than an hour, ministers prayed and community leaders spoke. A group of children performed a dance number. A boy the age that Erica would be if she had lived sang gospel.

“She was murdered and she was just a child,” said the 11-year-old vocalist, Prince Johnson. “I wanted to come out and show my support.”

Other children read the names of more than 40 youths, including Erica, who were killed in the last 10 years in Kansas City and Jackson County. Afterward, the boys and girls released balloons in memory of the young victims.

The event concluded with a dedication of a park honoring Erica and other slain, abused and missing children. Park officials have said they envision the park being up and running in 18 to 24 months, possibly sooner.

The site of the future park will be the same wooded area where Erica’s dismembered body was found on April 28, 2001.

She went unidentified until May 2005, when her mother and the mother’s husband were arrested in Muskogee, Okla., in the slaying.

The couple, who married after Erica’s death, were convicted last year in the killing.