Toddler Alone With Slain Dad's Body for 30 Hours

Girl, 3, hid in closet after father was brutally murdered
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 23, 2013 8:14 AM CDT
Toddler Alone With Slain Dad's Body for 30 Hours
   (Shutterstock)

A horrifying story out of Philadelphia, where a 34-year-old man was shot dead in a stairwell while his 3-year-old daughter was in his apartment upstairs ... and was left alone with her father's body for more than a day. At some point, the toddler went to her father; she told police, "My daddy was sleep [sic], and I went down to wake him up, but he wouldn't wake up," her great-grandmother tells NBC Miami. Armone Stanley had been carrying luggage downstairs last Wednesday, getting ready to put little Aryana on a flight back to her family in Florida, when he was shot 19 times.

Aryana was alone with the body for about 30 hours, until her family in Florida figured out something was wrong and got the landlord to check on the situation. She reportedly hid in a closet initially and was found huddled in her father's bed, the Orlando Sun-Sentinel reports. Stanley had been arrested in 2011 for ties to an identity theft ring, but his family says he was turning things around, and Aryana's mom describes him as a "good dad" who phoned Aryana daily. But the Philadelphia Inquirer reports that police do think the execution-style murder was, as a commander says, "a personal attack." (More murder stories.)

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