HARAHAN, La. – A 6-year-old girl was found murdered and her body was crammed into a plastic bucket, which was left on the front lawn of her biological mother’s house in Harahan, officials said.
Hannah Landon, the girlfriend of the girl’s father, has been arrested by the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office. The authorities located Landon at a local hospital and arrested her on suspicion of first-degree murder and obstruction of justice.
The victim was identified as Bella Fontenelle, a kindergarten student at St. Matthew the Apostle Catholic School in River Ridge. An autopsy confirmed that the girl’s death was by homicide and the body displayed “multiple injuries.”
According to Sheriff Joe Lopinto, the girl’s father reported his girlfriend and youngest daughter missing around 7:30 a.m. on April 26, after discovering that they were absent from their house on Donelon Drive.
Lopinto said investigators believe Landon killed the girl at that home on the previous night, placed the body in a 10-gallon chlorine bucket with a lid, and pulled the bucket in a wagon to place it outside the home of the girl’s biological mother, just over a block away on Sedgefield Drive.
A neighbor provided police with surveillance camera footage that showed a woman calmly pulling a wagon carrying a white bucket down a sidewalk.
Lopinto said detectives had not yet interviewed Landon, nor developed a motive for the killing.
The victim’s older sister, who was also at the house on the previous night, was unharmed.
The reason why the suspect brought the bucket to the home of her boyfriend’s ex-wife remains unknown.
