Almost a week later, Eloise Bryant is still haunted by the phone call that broke her heart, and devastated her family.
"My daughter called," she said. "And say, 'Mama, they done killed my baby.'"
Bryant's daughter, LaKittia, was inconsolable, she remembered. Her son, Armone Stanley, had just been gunned down in cold blood last Wednesday, while his 3-year-old daughter Aryana helplessly hid in a closet.
The 34-year-old dad of two was reportedly shot 19 times in the stairwell of his apartment on 49th Street in West Philadelphia. He was carrying luggage downstairs when someone opened fire. Stanley was preparing to send his daughter back home on a flight to South Florida.
Too young to really understand what happened, Aryana told police and her family what she saw. Her great-grandmother still remembers what she said.
"'My daddy was sleep, and I went down to wake him up, but he wouldn't wake up,"' Bryant said.
At first, Aryana hid in a closet. She was ultimately left alone with her father's dead body for about 30 hours, until her Florida family got wind that something was wrong, and asked the landlord to help.
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Bryant wonders why help did not arrive sooner.
"Why didn't nobody walk down the stairs and see him lying there? He stayed there all day and all night, and my baby was up there in the closet hungry,” she said.
Over the weekend, a judge released Aryana to her mother, Anna Cassieri -- a decision supported by the Philadelphia Deparment of Human Services:
"We fully support the judge's decision to reunite Aryanna with her mother. DHS has to take all the facts into consideration in assessing the safety of children in our care. We had the opportunity to ask for an emergency order on Friday and chose not to do so based on the amount of information we had at that time."
Stanley had been living in Philadelphia for about three years, and while there, he was arrested for his ties to an identity theft ring. But just as his family says he was turning his life around, it was tragically cut short.
"It hurt me so bad, I still can't stop crying," Bryant said.
Stanley's wake is set for Friday, and his funeral will be Saturday at noon. Both events will be held at the True Tabernacle Church in Fort Lauderdale.
Philadelphia detectives said they continue to track leads they hope will bring them to Stanley's killer but as of a week later there were no suspects in the case.
