3-year-old girl found alone with dead mother killed by aerosol can use

A young mother was found dead in Pontiac and her 3-year-old daughter discovered alone with her for two days.

A family member tried calling the victim during a two-day stretch but never got an answer. She came to the house to check on her and found her unresponsive

"Right now, it's like her aunt said, it's like a bad dream until you walk into that funeral home and see that body," said Nathia Stephenson, a family friend.

Stephenson is still wrapping her head around the death of her friend Ayauna Cooper. Her aunt found the 27-year-old dead inside her home Monday.

It is believed Cooper had been dead for at least two days. Her 3-year-old daughter was in the house the entire time.
 
"It's extremely unfortunate, the woman was 27 years old and now her 3-year-old is going to grow up without a mother," said Dennis Daley II, a neighbor.

The sheriff's office says deputies found several aerosol cans around Cooper's body. The Oakland County Medical Examiner says she died from inhalant abuse.

FOX 2: "This is what, huffing?"
 
"Yeah that's the slang, the huffing," said Scott Masi. "It's the ingestion of aerosol or any type of vapor. And what's so alarming about it, is that it's so easily accessible." 

Masi, an addiction expert, says huffing is more common among teenagers. It's addictive and dangerous.
 
"You could actually die from the first time you use, because what it's doing is, starving oxygen from your brain," Masi said. "And it gives you a high like any type of hallucinogen."

The sheriff's office says Cooper had a history of drug use. Nathia says it drove a wedge between them but Cooper seemed to have kicked the habit. Their last conversation was about motherhood. 

"We were talking about how we wanted to raise our kids," Stephenson said. "She was talking about how she wanted to raise her daughter."
 
Someone else will do that now and Cooper's friends and neighbors are left with regret.

"We just wish we would've known ahead of time and I don't know, maybe we could've done something,” said Susan Lendzian, a neighbor. 

They are also left with memories.

"She had this smile that just like, when she was happy, she was happy," Stephenson said. "(In) her bad times, she was still happy. She was truly a genuinely, good person.

As for the little girl she is okay physically and living with her great-grandfather. The sheriff's department's investigation is ongoing.