Police were searching as far away as Pennsylvania yesterday evening for the body of 26-year-old Monica Lozada-Rivaineira, the mother of the 4-year-old girl whose angelic face appeared on television recently when she was found abandoned on a Queens street, the authorities said.

In New York, police scoured the 538 acres of Forest Park as well as the 1,255-acre Flushing Meadows Corona Park and its attendant 84-acre manmade freshwater lake, considered the city’s largest lake, until about dusk yesterday, police said. The search is expected to resume this morning.

Earlier in the day, Lozada-Rivaineira’s boyfriend was arraigned on charges of killing the woman, trying to conceal her body, and abandoning her child. The Queens district attorney, Richard Brown, charged Cesar Ascarrunz, 32, with two counts of murder, reckless endangerment, abandonment of a child, endangering the welfare of a child, and tampering with physical evidence. His next court date is October 17, said a spokesman for the district attorney’s office, Kevin Ryan. Should he be convicted on the murder charge, Mr. Ascarrunz could serve 25 years to life in prison.

On September 24 at some point between 11 a.m. and noon, Mr. Ascarrunz choked Lozada-Rivaineira to death in their apartment of two months at 111-17 66th Ave. in Queens, according to a criminal complaint filed by the district attorney. The suspect – who police said has no prior arrests and no history of domestic violence – said that when he could not revive the woman, he cut her throat to establish an airway, the complaint says. Mr. Ascarrunz then put the body in a garbage bag and left it in their living room until 2 a.m. two days later, when he put the bag in the back of his vehicle and drove to 108th Street near 67th Avenue, where he left it beside other trash bags on the sidewalk, the court document says. Police said the location may have been near a trash bin. A private company disposes of refuse in and around the trash bin to a Pennsylvania landfill, so police said they were investigating leads in that state in addition to possible New York sites.

While the trash bag sat in the apartment, Mr. Ascarrunz woke the girl, Valery Belen Saavedra Lozada, at close to 1 a.m. on September 25 and dropped her off in front of 63-62 76th St. before driving away, the complaint says.

After people discovered the 4-year-old and contacted police, the city’s Administration for Children’s Services retrieved Valery. A spokeswoman for children’s services, Sharman Stein, said the agency is meeting with a child trauma expert today to discuss how to tell Valery about the tragedy. The girl is staying with a foster family in Queens until the agency finds a permanent home for her, Ms. Stein said. Thus far, a maternal cousin has come forward, Ms. Stein said, and the agency is trying to make contact with other family members.