"She didn't deserve what she got"

TROTWOOD, Ohio (WDTN) - In life, as in cooking, what's important is what you do with the ingredients you're given.

Carly Hughley knew the right recipes for both.

"She was a free-spirit, was very artistic, was very talented," says Carly's mom Delsia Taylor. "Could cook her tail off. I mean she could cook."

Carly had spent the last five years helping out with creations for the restaurant Rue Dumaine

She learned from watching her mom Delsia Taylor. While most 10-year-olds were cooking with Chef Boyardee, she was mastering her own recipes.

Her dishes have been making mouths water ever since, well maybe not at first.

"Everything she fixed, she had stuffed garlic into the chicken to the point we couldn't eat garlic for a while because she loved the taste of garlic," Delsia says.

But the girl with a taste for food and life was shot and killed last week at her Catalpa Crossing apartment along with 29-year-old Demetrius Beckwith.

Soon after deputies arrested Harvey Jones, an ex-boyfriend of Hughley's.

The Sheriff says the person who led them to Jones was Hughley's 10-year old son. He witnessed the shooting and then went next door to get help.

"He's a strong little boy," Delsia says. "He's a very strong little boy. We have to make sure he gets through this."

Delsia hopes her daughter's death can prevent others.

Aside from the domestic violence ribbons that will be handed out at the funeral, mourners can also sign a petition in favor of gun control.

"He was a convicted felon," Delsia says of Jones, who the Montgomery County Sheriff says had just finished serving 10 years in prison for rape. "Why did he have a gun? How was he able to get a gun?"

They're questions family members are trying deal with, as they try to get used to a life now missing one of its key ingredients.

"I just remember that beautiful smile and laughter she had for everybody," Delsia says.