AUSTIN -- Funeral services for two-year-old Colton Turner are still up in the air as the Travis County Medical Examiner's office is yet to release his body.
What is settled is how the service will be paid for. A staff member at Cook-Walden Davis Funeral Home in Georgetown started a fundraiser online, taking in more than $10,000 in three days.
For Jackie Payne, Colton's cousin on his father's side, it's been a blessing.
"I didn't want to see him not get the proper funeral, and when I heard about [the fundraising] and when I found out about that, I was overfilled with joy," Payne said.
Payne said she and Colton's mother, Meagan Work, were friends for a while after Colton was born.
"Being family makes it a lot worse, because I did love Colton, I did care about him a lot," she said. "I used to babysit him for her, but I didn't know that anything was going on."
There were times where Work would leave town with Colton and Payne and her family wouldn't know where they were, but Payne said the two would always show up later.
"Because of his age, you know, he didn't have a voice, he didn't have a say in what was going on in his life, and he couldn't tell us what was going on," Payne said. "He couldn't tell us he was being hurt so in that time frame of him being hurt, we don't know what was going on, we don't know what he was thinking or what he was feeling."
She says during the final months of Colton's life his dad Brandon Pelfrey tried to contact his mother, Meagan Work, repeatedly but was unsuccessful.
In the time since Colton's death several groups have formed on Facebook demanding justice. A change.org petition asking for Work's bond to be revoked has more than 2,800 signatures.
"As a community, I'm hoping we can come together and take care of what we need to take care of, to try to remove as much of this as we can," Payne said.
