As news of the grue­some killing and dis­mem­ber­ing of four-year-old Ama­rah Lal­lite be­gan to cir­cu­late in the ear­ly hours yes­ter­day, an al­ready trau­ma­tised na­tion fell to its knees as de­tails of the hor­rif­ic act be­came known.

An over­whelm­ing out­pour­ing of prayers be­gan al­most in­stant­ly for the four-year-old, who was re­port­ed­ly killed by a man who had been like a fa­ther to her for al­most her en­tire life.

In shock as she walked out of the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre in St James af­ter iden­ti­fy­ing lit­tle Ama­rah’s body yes­ter­day, her moth­er, Tri­cia Vil­laru­el, choked up as she whis­pered, “I nev­er thought he would have done that. He loved Ama­rah.”

She added, “He would have killed for her, he al­ways pro­tect­ed her. He was nev­er vi­o­lent to her.”

Lit­tle Ama­rah is be­lieved to have been killed be­tween 10 pm Mon­day and mid­night yes­ter­day at her Fifth Street, Five Rivers, Arou­ca home by her step­fa­ther, even as her moth­er stood be­fore of­fi­cers at the Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tion fil­ing a do­mes­tic dis­tur­bance re­port.

At the FSC yes­ter­day, the weep­ing Vil­laru­el re­count­ed, “My daugh­ter Ama­rah was a lov­ing, lov­ing, lov­ing child.”

Star­ing blankly off be­fore grief caused her to close her eyes, she went on, “She was the light of the room. Every­body loved this child. Every­body...”

Fight­ing to find the words as her el­der daugh­ter stood at her side, Vil­laru­el shook her head, say­ing, “I can say noth­ing bad about her. I don’t know what would make him want to harm that child so much. She was a dar­ling. She was every­body dar­ling.”

Vil­laru­el, 41, and the 39-year-old sus­pect were in­volved in a com­mon-law re­la­tion­ship which spanned Ama­rah’s age.

Asked if the sus­pect had ever been vi­o­lent be­fore or what could have trig­gered the homi­ci­dal episode, the griev­ing woman ap­peared con­fused, say­ing, “No, he nev­er showed any in­di­ca­tion of be­ing schizo. I don’t want to say, but that’s how he was act­ing, like if he was a dif­fer­ent per­son, and dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ties were talk­ing to me that night.”

But she claimed she had nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced such a side of the sus­pect be­fore.

“He nev­er showed me that type of ten­den­cy. He was nev­er an an­gry per­son or vi­o­lent per­son, so when I dis­cov­ered he killed her, I was shocked.”

Ad­mit­ting the in­ci­dent was a shock­ing blow, she ad­mit­ted to leav­ing the child in the house to get help from the po­lice as she feared the sus­pect want­ed to harm her too.

“I was in the sta­tion mak­ing the re­port at the time. When I left, she was on the bed watch­ing her tablet. But he try to drag me in­to the room be­cause he look like he was go­ing to harm me. I called her to come but she not com­ing. She was laugh­ing like she thought we were play­ing so I had no choice.”

Say­ing she an­tic­i­pat­ed the po­lice would have re­spond­ed soon­er, Vil­laru­el lament­ed the fact that she left her house to get help.

Fifth Street is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 400 me­tres away from the Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tion, which is lo­cat­ed in Five Rivers Junc­tion, and is walk­ing dis­tance away from the prop­er­ty.

Guardian Me­dia was told the sus­pect re­cent­ly be­gan act­ing dif­fer­ent­ly and speak­ing strange ut­ter­ances.

Po­lice re­ports in­di­cate that Ama­rah’s moth­er ar­rived at the Arou­ca Po­lice Sta­tion around 10.10 pm to lodge a re­port of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and begged for po­lice in­ter­ven­tion.

When of­fi­cers sub­se­quent­ly went to Vil­laru­el’s res­i­dence, it was locked up and in dark­ness. The of­fi­cers called the sus­pect’s name sev­er­al times and he emerged bare­backed and wear­ing three-quar­ter pants.

The of­fi­cers in­struct­ed the moth­er to car­ry out a wel­fare check for the child. When she en­tered the house, how­ev­er, she screamed un­con­trol­lably up­on find­ing Ama­rah’s head­less body.

A fe­male of­fi­cer then rushed in­to the house, where she found Ama­rah’s mu­ti­lat­ed body.

A check showed the lit­tle girl was killed in one bed­room, af­ter which her body was dragged in­to an­oth­er bed­room, and her head was stashed in a bar­rel at the back of the house.

Af­ter learn­ing of the hor­ri­fy­ing crime, peo­ple at the scene ex­pressed shock, not­ing that the sus­pect ap­peared calm and did not have any traces of blood on him.

The sus­pect was lat­er ar­rest­ed and tak­en to the po­lice sta­tion for ques­tion­ing, whilst the North Cen­tral Di­vi­sion Task Force per­formed a sta­t­ic guard at the res­i­dence un­til foren­sic of­fi­cers re­turned to the scene yes­ter­day morn­ing.

In a voice note re­gard­ing the killing, Snr Supt of the North Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, Richard Smith, ap­pealed to the pub­lic to seek help if they were in any dis­tress in re­la­tion­ships.

“Please do not re­sort to vi­o­lence to set­tle do­mes­tic is­sues. Seek pro­fes­sion­al help from the time the ear­li­est signs of abuse ap­pears,” Smith said.

“Do not use your young in­no­cent chil­dren to set­tle your scores. This is a re­al case of the dev­as­tat­ing im­pact of do­mes­tic abuse where an in­no­cent child’s life was snuffed out.”

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that coun­selling has been made avail­able to Vil­laru­el and oth­er rel­a­tives, close friends and po­lice of­fi­cers who re­spond­ed.