CARY — Tony Stamps saw the blood when he went into his 31-year-old niece’s bedroom Wednesday afternoon and knew something horrible had happened, but he initially thought her 3-year-old daughter was merely asleep in the same room. She wasn’t. The toddler, too, had been knifed to death.

“It was hard. I had never seen anything like that. It was extra hard when I saw the baby,” Stamps said.

Authorities today were continuing to try to identify a suspect in what autopsies have established was a double homicide.

Sharkey County Coroner Angelia Eason said Karitha Carroll, 31, and Jamaya Carroll, had been dead about 12 hours when Stamps found them.

Carroll had multiple stab wounds to her chest and defensive wounds on her arms. She was on a bedroom floor of her home on U.S. 61, Sharkey County Sheriff Lindsey Adams Jr. said.

Eason said the mother also suffered slash wounds to her throat. “All of her wounds were in the front,” Eason said. “Either she was fighting or trying to stop someone from cutting her.”

The preliminary report also showed that the toddler died of slash wounds to her throat, Eason said. Jamaya also was slashed on her right arm. The toddler was found on the bed, officials said.

“Right now, we’re not ruling anybody out,” Adams said of the investigation.

Stamps said he was checking on his niece after many calls and text messages from family, friends and co-workers went unanswered.

“It was unlike Karitha not to return phone calls,” he said.

Adams said investigators found very few signs of struggle in the home. A lamp was on the floor next to Carroll’s body.

Officials believe the assailant was someone Carroll knew because she and her daughter were killed in a bedroom rather than the living room, Adams said.

The sheriff and Carroll’s friend Marcella Thomas, who worked at Church’s Chicken on Pace Street in Rolling Fork, saw her Tuesday night at a South Delta Middle School football game.

Thomas said she and Carroll sat and laughed together while they watched Carroll’s 13-year-old son, DeQuontae Carroll, play.

“She didn’t act like something was wrong,” Thomas said. “It didn’t look like she had any problems in her life.”

Thomas said Carroll always had a smile as did her daughter who had started attending Ripley Blackwell Head Start Center last month.

Carroll’s mother, Verda Stamps, said her last conversation with her daughter was about who would get Jamaya, known as China, off the school bus Tuesday evening.

Family members and friends agree that Carroll adored her three children and would often drive around with Jamaya, DeQuontae and her 14-year-old daughter, Kaneisha Carroll, who attends South Delta High School.

Kaneisha and DeQuontae live with their grandmother, and they were with her when their mother and sister were slain.

Archie Sanders Jr., Jamaya’s father, could not be reached.

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Contact Tish Butts at tbutts@vicksburgpost.com