Ruth Thompson, Bella's great-aunt, remarks "Somebody that's defenseless. How can you do that? How can you take a five-year-old and brutally killed them? I don't understand."
These are questions Bella's family imagined they would ever have to answer -- until Monday.
Thompson and her family are left trying to cope with Bella's death.
Ruth says Bella spent a lot of time with her grandma, just as she did the night she was killed.
Thompson said "she loved her to death -- so did her mother and father. I don't know how anybody can do something like this."
Ruth adds Bella's mother, Crystal, is beyond grief stricken. Bella "was her world, her life, the air she breathed. I mean she loved her daughter with every inch of her body."
Ruth describes Bella as a bubbly little girl, who "liked to color, she liked to play, she liked to be with her grandma."
One of the suspects in custody was someone the family deeply trusted. It's shocking, as Ruth tells Eyewitness News "no mother should have to bury their child. Not at the age of five -- from the hands of a murderer."
---this is so heartbreaking.
