Seven-year-old Nayla often prayed God would keep her mother, 25-year-old Shadae Foster, safe.
Now the young girl and the rest of her family are looking to Him for strength to cope with Foster's gruesome murder.
Her body was found by residents of Petersfield Tuesday morning. There was a chop wound to her head. Her body was discovered in Bastard Cedar Walk, just metres from the Petersfield Wesleyan Holiness Church.
“Mi cyaah believe dem kill Shadae and leave her a roadside. My husband just died in August from COVID and then this happens,” her distraught grandmother Melva Myrie told the Jamaica Observer.
She said although Foster lived on Wharf Road in the parish, she visited often.
“She come here every day and her mother makes sure she never leaves without a bag. She usually come with two of her children because her oldest one [Nayla] lives here. But she didn't come yesterday,” Myrie said.
“Shadae was a very bright girl, very smart. Her mother was even planning to send her back to school. Mi sorry she dead this way. Mi sorry for the children, to know they lost their mother this way,” she added.