What Marcus May is living through is almost impossible to put into words. In the span of a devastating series of events, he lost his mother, his sister, and his nephew—and now his own 15-year-old daughter stands accused in connection with the killings. For May, the tragedy has created a painful reality in which the people he loved most are now connected by a case that has shattered his family forever.

The case centers on the deaths of five family members discovered on Sunday, July 12, in East St. Louis, Illinois. According to prosecutors, May’s teenage daughter and her teenage boyfriend are accused in connection with the deadly events. Both teens had reportedly been considered runaways, and May said members of his family had been trying to help them before everything took a horrifying turn.

Among those killed were May’s sister, Cherie, his nephew Devin, and his mother, Patricia. According to the account provided by May and authorities, Cherie was killed first. When Patricia and Devin later went to check on her, they unknowingly walked into a situation that would also cost them their lives.

For Marcus, thinking about his mother’s final actions is particularly painful. He believes Patricia went there because she loved her family and wanted to help her granddaughter.

“Wow,” May reflected while speaking about what happened. “Because she didn’t deserve any of this. She, my mom ultimately died because of her love.”

That love, he explained, was what drove Patricia to try to find out what was happening. His daughter was Patricia’s granddaughter, and the family had been concerned about the teenager. Rather than turning away from the situation, Patricia apparently tried to step in.

“Due to the fact that was her grandbaby, she went to try to save and see if she could save and to get took out like that, it’s like, wow,” May said.

For a father already grieving multiple family members, the allegations involving his daughter have added another layer of pain that is difficult to comprehend. She is only 15 years old, yet prosecutors have connected her to a case involving the deaths of members of her own family. May is now left mourning the people he lost while confronting the possibility that his only child may have played a role in what happened.

One of the most disturbing allegations involves what prosecutors say happened to Patricia after her death. Authorities allege that the teenagers cut off the grandmother’s thumb in an effort to use her fingerprint to gain access to her iPhone.

The allegation left May stunned, especially because of how he remembered his mother and her relationship with technology.

“Oh my, my mama was 70 something years old,” he said. “She just got that iPhone. She barely knew how to work the lock on the front door, let alone doing fingerprinting for an iPhone.”

The contrast is heartbreaking: a grandmother who May described as barely comfortable using the technology allegedly became the victim of an act intended to unlock the very phone she was still learning to use.

But perhaps the most painful part of the case for Marcus is looking at his daughter and trying to reconcile the child he raised with the allegations she now faces.

“She looks just like me,” he said. “That was my only child. So yeah, none of this comes easy.”

Those words reveal the deeply personal conflict at the center of this tragedy. Marcus is not watching the case unfold as an outsider. The victims were his family. One of the accused is his daughter. Every development forces him to confront grief from both sides of the same case.

Before the killings, May said the family had been trying to reach his daughter and help her. Like many parents facing difficulties with a teenager, he had apparently tried to understand what she was going through. He wanted her to communicate with him and tell him if something was wrong.

Now, looking back, he finds himself replaying those conversations and questioning what he may have missed.

“To look back at all the lies she told,” May said, recalling what it was like trying to communicate with his daughter. He remembered attempting to sit down with her and ask simple but important questions: “Are you okay? What’s wrong? Talk to me.”

Those questions now carry an entirely different weight.

For Marcus, there may always be questions about whether there were warning signs that could have been recognized earlier. Could someone have intervened? Could the family have done something differently? Was his daughter hiding something more serious than anyone realized?

Such questions can become overwhelming after a tragedy, especially when a family believes it had already been trying to help.

According to May, his family did not simply abandon the teenager when she was struggling. They were making efforts to bring her back and understand what was happening. Patricia’s decision to check on the situation appears, in his eyes, to have been another extension of that effort.

Instead, prosecutors allege, the attempt to help ended in unimaginable violence.

The case has stunned the East St. Louis community, not only because five members of a family were killed, but because of the ages and relationships of those accused. Investigators and prosecutors must now reconstruct exactly what happened, determine the sequence of events, and establish the individual roles allegedly played by each teenager.

Because May’s daughter is a minor and the criminal proceedings remain ongoing, the accusations against her have yet to be fully tested in court. An arrest or criminal charge does not by itself establish guilt, and the legal process will ultimately determine responsibility based on the evidence presented.

But regardless of what happens in court, Marcus May’s family has already been permanently changed.

His sister is gone. His nephew is gone. His mother is gone. Other relatives were also lost in a case involving five victims. And his only daughter—the child who looks like him, the child his family had apparently been trying to save—is now at the center of the investigation.

There are no simple emotions for a father in that position.

Grief for the victims can exist alongside love for a child. Anger can exist alongside confusion. A desperate need for answers can exist alongside memories of raising the person now accused of something almost impossible to imagine.

Marcus is left looking backward, examining conversations that once seemed ordinary and wondering whether they contained clues he could not recognize at the time. Every question he once asked his daughter—whether she was okay, what was wrong, whether she could talk to him—has now become part of a painful search for understanding.

His mother’s death may be the hardest part to reconcile. In his telling, Patricia walked into danger because she was trying to help her granddaughter. She acted out of the instinct that drives so many grandparents and parents: when someone you love is in trouble, you go looking for them.

She could not have known how that decision would end.

Now, as the investigation and court proceedings continue, Marcus May faces a future he never could have imagined. He must mourn the relatives he lost while watching the justice system determine what role, if any, his teenage daughter played in their deaths.

The evidence may eventually provide answers about what happened inside that home and why five members of one family lost their lives. But no verdict can restore what Marcus has lost or erase the devastating contradiction he now carries with him.

The person he remembers as his little girl is now accused in the deaths of people who were also part of her own family.

“She looks just like me,” he said.

And then came the words that perhaps best capture the heartbreak of a father caught in the middle of an unimaginable family tragedy:

“That was my only child.”