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GREENVILLE — From the deck of her home, Renee Woody can see dozens of teddy bears and balloons left at a makeshift memorial for her 8-year-old daughter.
The memorial sits in the yard of the abandoned mobile home where Dymia Janae Woody was found raped and slain on Tuesday.
“When all this is over, I can’t stay there. I’ll have to find somewhere else to move,” Woody said Thursday.
Police say a 14-year-old boy who was a close friend of the family is responsible. The boy told a Greenville television station before his arrest that he was the “safety guy” in the neighborhood.
“I walk all the kids home, and it’s not an unusual thing. I just do it because I have a little brother and sisters, and I would want somebody to do that for me,” the boy told WHNS-TV.
His name has not been released because he is charged as a juvenile. Prosecutors are considering whether to try him as an adult.
Dymia’s death shook her tiny neighborhood in Piedmont, a community about six miles south of Greenville where bicycles and toys are kept on the lawn and parents let their children play outside all day.
Woody said she asked her daughter to come home before the streetlights came on. When night fell Monday and her daughter wasn’t back, “I knew something was wrong. She had never not come home on time.”
The suspect joined in the search for the girl, whose body was found in the closet of the abandoned home. Authorities said she was sexually assaulted and asphyxiated.
Woody said she initially did not suspect the teen — the best friend of her 14-year-old son — but said the boy then began acting suspiciously and changed his story about what happened the last time he saw her.
She said the teen asked her daughter, the youngest of her three children, to walk with him as he took his brothers and sisters home.
The family told investigators about their suspicions. The boy was one of several volunteers in the neighborhood to give DNA samples. A crime lab Wednesday afternoon matched the teen’s DNA with genetic material found at the crime scene, and the boy was arrested about an hour later.
A scheduled Family Court hearing for the boy was postponed Thursday. He will remain in a juvenile jail. The boy’s mother and his attorney, public defender John Mauldin, declined to comment.
Back in the neighborhood, a funeral wreath is attached to the deck of Dymia’s home, where her relatives remembered her as a tomboy who loved basketball.
Woody said the past three days have been a whirlwind. She will lay her daughter to rest Saturday, and her church has offered to help with the funeral. She still talks about her daughter in the present tense.
“She is vivacious, happy-go-lucky. She could be a little antsy sometimes. But she is a joy. A wonderful baby girl. I really miss her.”
Through tears, Woody said she hasn’t been able to sleep because right as she gets ready to drift off, she remembers how her daughter couldn’t fall asleep unless her mom was by her side.
“I just miss my baby. I wish this was over.”
