Four-Year-Old, Dropped Off Alone, Cried for Dead 'Mommy' Tonya Hunter

(July 29) -- A surveillance video captured the horror of a 4-year-old boy who was dropped off alone at a dark street corner near downtown Cleveland not long after his mother, marriage counselor Tonya Hunter, was killed.

The grainy video shows him chasing desperately after the car.

"He was crying, 'I want my mommy! I want my mommy!" witness Tonya Crenshaw told TV station WOIO-Channel 19. She said someone asked the boy who was driving the car. "He said, 'That was my daddy."

Hunter's husband, Maurice Lyons, 38, was arraigned in Cleveland today. He didn't enter a plea on charges of aggravated murder and domestic violence; bond was set at $8 million. Police say he is not the boy's father.

His attorney, public defender Kathleen Demetz, did not immediately return a message left today by AOL News at her office.

The boy was left near a bar at about 10:30 p.m. Sunday. Someone called 911, and police took the child back to his home in Bedford Heights, a Cleveland suburb. He led them to Hunter, who had been stabbed 17 times, authorities said.

Channel 19 reported that the boy is living in a foster home temporarily.

Hunter, who had her own counseling service, met Lyons, an ex-con, at an anger management class she was leading, according to media reports. Friends told The Plain Dealer he wrote poems to her during the class. They were married in December.

In late March, The Plain Dealer said, Hunter reported to police that Lyons had punched her in the back of the head. He told her, "If I go to back to jail, I will kill you," according to court documents.

Lyons was released from jail in mid-June after he was convicted in the attack, the newspaper said. Hunter called Lyons' probation officer shortly thereafter, reporting that he was violent and that she did not want him in the house. Municipal Court Judge Marilyn Cassidy called him back into court.

"I told him he had to live somewhere else and he was to be fitted with an electronic GPS monitor," Cassidy told The Plain Dealer.

But he didn't show up, court records say, so Cassidy issued a warrant for his arrest. The court's apprehension unit could not find him, Cassidy said, but he found Hunter again, confronting her on July 13.

"The defendant [Lyons] who appeared high on drugs moved close to Tonya Hunter/spouse, demanding money in an intimidating manner," court documents said. "The defendant then pushed Hunter/spouse against the kitchen sink."

Lyons has a criminal record in Missouri, Illinois and Ohio, the newspaper reported.

Hunter earned a master's degree from Case Western Reserve University in social science and started her own counseling practice in 2007, Success 1 Services, according to her website.

Prosecutors said today they believe her son is the only witness to her slaying.