SUMTER, S.C. — As Elijah Nelson sits on his front porch, he thinks about how it could have been if his granddaughter Nevaeh Adams were still alive.
Thursday is the death anniversary of Adams and her mother Sharee Bradley. The pain of their passings still weighs heavily on Nelson two years later.
"My wife and I, we sit out here all the time and just think how we can just see her on this deck doing her own thing. She'd be jumping from lap to lap," Nelson said. "People have their tendency of coming to you saying, 'Man, I know how you feel.' Oh, you do? You been through that? ... Not a day go by we don’t think about them or mention their names.”
Police said Adams, who was five at the time, and her mother were killed in their apartment by Daunte Johnson.
While Bradley's body was found at the home, it took more than two months and many searches by community and law enforcement before Adams' remains were found in a Richland County landfill.
Bradley's son looks up to Heaven to speak to them both.
"We have him to think that mommy have to go work for God," Nelson said, "And she's up in the sky working with God and she's not going to come back. We have to go see her. ... He'll look up towards heaven and say, 'Hey mommy, and hey 'Vaeh.'"
Nelson said they're still hoping closure will come at the suspect's trial.
According to Sumter County Solicitor Ernest Finney, the coronavirus has slowed the process, but they could hold a trial by the end of the year.
"There are two important evaluations that have to be done on anyone who is charged with this type of serious crime," Finney said, "and one of the evaluations has been completed. We are waiting now for the other evaluation to be completed because just like the courthouse was shut down, the Department of Mental Health was also shut down for a while."
Until then, Nelson and family wait for closure and hold onto the memories.
"Give him his sentence and let it be rest assured in our hearts and minds that he has been sentenced and he deserve everything that he get and more," Nelson said.
A memorial service was held in honor of the mother and child on Thursday night.