Family tries to move on after murder
Five days after Mel Cotton's brutal murder, her family is trying to put their lives back together.
By remembering how she helped others, her mother and three sisters said her death was not in vain.
They are coping by remembering not how she died, but why.
"Her death wasn't in vain. She was helping someone just like she always helped. Anything you need. If you needed someone to sit with you she would sit with you," sister Linda Cotton said.
Cotton, 30, was stabbed to death on Monday morning. Police said the suspect might have been angry with Cotton because she was helping his former girlfriend leave their abusive relationship.
“She died the way she lived. It was violent, but she died because she helped someone and I can be more at peace with that," mother Liberty Bell Cotton said.
A memorial fund has been established for Mel Cotton's 5-year-old son.
Send donations to the Mel Cotton Memorial Fund to any of Velocity Credit Unions' three locations at 900 Round Rock Avenue in Round Rock, One Texas Center at 505 Barton Springs Road or 610 East 11th Street.
Police said the suspect stabbed Cotton and her 5-year-old son several times.
The boy was left for dead, but survived, possibly because his aunt Ethel McPherson, a nurse, got there in time. She tended to his wounds until the ambulance arrived.
The family said they knew something was wrong because their routine Monday morning had been broken.
Cotton didn't show up for her job at Velocity Credit Union that morning and she wasn't answering the phone or making her regular phone calls.
For McPherson, the vision of finding her 30-year old sister dead is still very much alive in her memory.
"I knew she was dead I could feel it. I knew she was already dead, but I still had to get there and when I got there, I called out her name and saw she was lying there in an awkward position. I didn't see her face but I knew she was gone," she said.
Cotton’s family and friends are wearing purple ribbons and flowers (her favorite color) to honor Cotton’s memory.
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"We think about her constantly and we know she's thinking about us. It's hard for all of us," Debra Cotton said.
Her mother is moving forward and doesn't blame the friend or hate the attacker.
"I don't hate because God wouldn't want that and that's not me. She died because she loved someone and that was just her, she was just a moral supporter. And I can't hate him for that," she said.
Mel Cotton's funeral will be Monday in Wichita Falls.