Scores of mourners paid respects Thursday to a 5-year-old girl whose body was found 11 days after she disappeared from her apartment complex near Detroit.
"The whole community's pulling together," said Brian Merkle, manager of the Merkle Funeral Service in Monroe, Mich., which is donating its services.
Most expenses, including the small, white casket in which Nevaeh Buchanan's body rested, were paid for by donations, Merkle told the Detroit Free Press.
"There's been a lot of outpouring," said Sherry Buchanan, Nevaeh's grandmother.
Two fishermen found Nevaeh's body along the banks of the River Raisin in Monroe last Thursday. The girl disappeared from the Monroe apartment complex where she lived with her mother and Buchanan May 24.
Merkle told The Detroit News he had heard from people from 30 states expressing condolences. A woman answering the funeral home's telephone Thursday told United Press International she estimated hundreds of people would participate in the two-day visitation.
Several motorcycle clubs
offered to participate in the funeral processional Saturday after learning Nevaeh enjoyed playing with toy motorcycles, the Free Press said.
Investigators said a Monroe couple told police they'd helped two men pull a car out of the mud along the River Raisin hours after Nevaeh disappeared.
Police were also scrutinizing a gas station surveillance tape where convicted sex offender George Kennedy, 39, was seen the night the girl disappeared, Detroit's WWJ-TV reported. He and acquaintance Roy Smith, 48, were later jailed on parole violations. Both have been questioned by police about the death but neither has been charged.
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