Community shocked by 6-year-old girl’s body found stuffed in bucket at neighbor’s home

HARAHAN (WVUE) - The Harahan community is grieving the sudden loss of 6-year-old Bella Fontenelle.

Neighbors say there was never an indication that something tragic would happen to the family, but on Wednesday (April 26) morning, Fontenelle’s body was found stuffed into a chlorine bucket and left outside her mother’s home.

”It’s tough. It’s still tough thinking about it,” said Ken Livaudais, who lives a few homes from where the child was found.

Surveillance cameras outside the Livaudais home captured the suspect, Hannah Landon, wheeling the bucket to the child’s mother’s house around 9:30 Tuesday night.

Across Sedgfield Street in the Imperial Woods subdivision, one man remembers welcoming the mother to the area.

“I had a neighborly relationship with her. She was a great person. Everytime I talked with her I would stop for a few minutes and just have a sweet conversation, tease the little girls a bit, just to welcome her into the neighborhood,” he said. “She was a single mother; she was trying to raise those kids correctly.”

MORE: Harahan woman accused of murdering 6-year-old girl, leaving her in bucket on mother’s lawn

Neighbors say they could never be ready to hear that the suspect was someone so close to the family. Landon was identified as the girlfriend of the child’s father, who lives around the block.

Filled with anger and grief, the community tries to make sense of the horrific scene.

“There is no more morality in this world. This is the final generation where people just don’t care about anything but themselves,” said a neighbor.

Fontenelle was a kindergarten student at St. Matthew the Apostle School in River Ridge.

The school has canceled classes for the rest of the week and will have support resources for students and faculty on campus Monday morning when classes resume.

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