A shocking video seemingly shows a Louisiana woman dropping off the dead body of her boyfriend’s 6-year-old daughter, Bella Fontenelle, at her biological mother’s home.
Hannah Landon is the primary suspect in Bella’s death, according to Law & Crime.
Landon is accused of killing the girl, stuffing the child’s body into a plastic bucket before placing it in a wagon and dropping it off in the yard of the victim’s biological mother.
On Wednesday, the 43-year-old was taken into custody and charged with first-degree murder and obstruction of justice in Bella’s death, WDSU reports.
The arrest came hours after authorities announced they were investigating the death of a 6-year-old girl, whose dead body was discovered on Wednesday morning.
Bella Fontenelle’s father reported her and Hannah missing to the Harahan Police Department around 7:30 a.m.
Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joseph Lopinto said another child in the home was found unharmed.
Police eventually went to Bella’s biological mother’s house, which is only a block away, where they found the little girl’s body, according to WDSU.
The outlet reports that she had been placed inside a 10-gallon bucket and left on her biological mother’s front lawn.
Authorities were ultimately able to track down CCTV footage from a few homes in the neighborhood, which showed a woman appearing to be Landon pulling a wagon holding a large plastic bucket on it to the biological woman’s home.
Police ultimately found Landon at a local hospital and arrested her. Sheriff Lopinto said that neither of Bella’s biological parents had been charged and aren’t believed to be involved in the girl’s killing.
Bella’s cause of death was determined to be strangulation and blunt force trauma following an autopsy conducted Wednesday afternoon. According to the medical examiner, the girl had not been dismembered to fit into the bucket.
Landon and Bella’s biological mother have had issues in the past, newly-released court records show.
In 2021, a police report described an incident at an area country club that left the girl’s mother injured in her face and hand, per WDSU.
Landon, who was given a summons for simple battery in that case, eventually filed a restraining order against Bella’s mother shortly after. She claimed she feared she would suffer injury, loss, or damage.