Police continue to search for Coralrose Fullwood’s killer. File photo  

From The Associated Press

NORTH PORT - A 6-year-old girl found slain in the woods near her home more than a week ago was remembered during a funeral service today as police searched for her killer.

Coralrose Fullwood’s body was found near a construction site two blocks from her home on Sept. 17. A man walking his dog found the body, hours after her family awoke to find her missing from her bed.

About 150 people attended a service for her Monday at a Fort Myers funeral home.

“She was just a joy,” said her mother, Ellen-Beth Fullwood. “She was truly an angel here on Earth, and she went home.”

Police have released few details of the investigation but say no one has been ruled out as a suspect.

Authorities visiting the home afterward found filthy and deplorable conditions, prompting the state’s child welfare agency to remove the four remaining children from the house.

Those children, ages 4 to 12, were placed with their grandparents after a hearing.

Dale Fullwood, 40, and his stepson, Seaton VanderWoude, returned to the family’s home Saturday, two days after the police released it back to them. He acknowledged that conditions in the house had been less than clean but said it wasn’t as bad as investigators said during a court hearing last week.

“I don’t see us as bad parents,” he told the Sarasota Herald Tribune.

Investigators spent days scouring the family’s home and the neighborhood for clues. Dale Fullwood said they seized four computers and all of his and Coralrose’s clothes.

He said no one in his family had anything to do with the disappearance and slaying of the little girl he called “Rosie.”

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