Ebony Archie left her car running with her son asleep in the back seat when she stopped at a grocery store on Thursday. When she came back outside, her car and her son, Kingston Frazier, were both missing. They were both found, with the six-year-old shot dead in the backseat, hours later, according to the New York Times.

Local police have arrested three suspects in connection to Frazier’s death. Dwan Wakefield, D’Allen Washington, and Byron McBride will all be charged with capital murder and are being held without bail. McBride, the oldest of the trip at 19 years old, was allegedly the one to pull the trigger.

“All they had to do is let this kid off on the side of the road, at a grocery store, at a church, anywhere else, but they chose to kill the kid,” said Heath Hall, a spokesman for Madison County Sheriff Randy Tucker.

Many people felt sympathy for Archie and her tragic loss, whether or not they were parents themselves. The senseless loss of life, especially such a young one, seemingly struck a cord. Even Gov. Phil Bryant of Mississippi was moved enough to react on Facebook.

“It’s hard to know that people out there are evil, that would kill a child,” Velma Eddington, Archie’s aunt, told The Clarion-Ledger. “That’s evil. That baby hadn’t done anything to him. That baby hadn’t done nothing. They could have left that child on that back seat, asleep. They didn’t have to kill him. Those people are evil. Evil.”

Before the suspects were arrested, blame was passed between the police department and even Archie herself in the days following the tragedy. Hinds County, Miss., Sheriff Victor Mason went as far as to falsely claim Archie didn’t initially tell officers her son was in the backseat of the stolen car. However, her family was quick to correct them and protect Archie from accusations of playing a role in the theft of her own car and murder of her own child, according to the SunHerald.

“(Archie) told (the deputy) right then that the car was missing and her baby was in it,” Eddington said. “Why would she be concerned about an old car? Anybody who says she didn’t say the baby was missing is wrong.”

Kingston was preparing to graduate from kindergarten at North Jackson Elementary School and was “beloved by his classmates and teachers.”