Left inset: Ophelia Lawery-Daniels (GoFundMe) Right inset: Ophelia Lawery-Daniels and her mom Micah Lawery (KSDK/YouTube). Background: Micah Lawery’s apartment in St. Louis, Mo. (KSDK/YouTube).
A mom in St. Louis returning home from a trip to a beauty store reportedly walked into her apartment to find her 9-month-old daughter and the baby’s father both dead in a “senseless” murder-suicide, according to police and loved ones.
“It’s not something I can unsee,” Micah Lawery, mother of Ophelia Lawery-Daniels, told local CBS affiliate KSDK last week about walking in and discovering her daughter’s lifeless body next to the child’s father, Zacchaeus Daniels, 21, after he took Ophelia’s life and his own on Feb. 28, according to the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. Authorities announced Thursday that they were investigating the incident as a murder-suicide.
“Something that is burned into my brain,” Lawery said. “I don’t need to close my eyes to see it.”
The 23-year-old told KSDK that Daniels suffered from mental health problems, but was never known to be violent toward her, their daughter or anyone else. Police have yet to release a motive.
“I don’t know why,” Lawery said when asked what could have led Daniels to do something like this. “I’m pretty sure I’ll never know why, and with that, I’ll have to find closure in that.”
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Describing Daniels, she told KSDK: “I try not to paint him in a bad light. Knowing that as a friend, he was a great friend. As a partner, a very loving and gentle partner to me. As a father, him trying his best and doing everything he can to be a good father.”
Being at the north St. Louis apartment that the family shared together is hard now, Lawery said, and each day since the tragedy has been a struggle.
“I describe it as like an eerie feeling, knowing that her life began here and it ended here as well,” she explained. “Clothes that she didn’t get to wear and toys that she didn’t get to play with and just the silence that now takes over the house. It’s so quiet, you could hear a pin drop.”
A family friend who launched a GoFundMe for Lawery last week described her daughter and what happened in the description, saying: “Our sweet angel baby’s life was taken in a senseless act of violence. Ophelia is the vibrant, happy, deeply loved daughter of Micah Lawery. In her short 9 months she quickly stole the hearts of her uncles, aunties, grandma, and everyone who met her. May her love for Mrs. Rachel and Reese’s peanut butter cups always live on.”
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