Fourteen-year-old Matilda Kaye Crabtree was hiding in a closet, playing burglar. Her father, who didn't know she was home, pulled open the door with gun drawn.
"She went, `Boo!' and that scared him," said Stacy Redding, who crouched with her friend in the closet, and then watched as Robert Crabtree fatally shot his daughter in the neck.Kaye's last words to her father: "I love you, Daddy."
Stacy, who was not injured, said Kaye's father was devastated.
Crabtree, 53, has not been charged with any crime. Ouachita Parish Chief Deputy Richard
Fewell said it was "a pure accident."
Kaye was pronounced dead Sunday afternoon. She was supposed to be staying at Stacy's house on Saturday night, but the two changed their minds and went to Kaye's instead.
When Kaye heard her parents drive up at around 1 a.m., "me and her went into the closet," Stacy said, "tapping the walls and stuff" as though someone had broken into the house and was trying to hide.
More than 200 people attended Kaye's funeral Tuesday.
"Everybody loved her," said Stacy, Kaye's best friend since the fourth grade.
"She had a good sense of humor. You'll be down and depressed and she'll cheer you up," sobbed Jenny Nevels, 14.
Classmates from West Monroe High School, where Kaye was a freshman, had to stand in the hall of the funeral home's chapel because there were no more seats available.
"This is something every kid has done," Fewell said. "I don't know how the father is going to live with it."
Fewell said it shows how scared people are in their own homes these days.
"We live in such a violent world," he said.