When Alecia Phonesavanh heard her 19-month-old son, Bou Bou, screaming, she thought he was simply frightened by the armed men who had burst into the house in the middle of the night. Then she saw the charred remains of the portable playpen where the toddler had been sleeping, and she knew something horrible had happened.

Phonesavanh and her husband, Bounkham, had been staying with his sister, Amanda, in Cornelia, a small town in northeastern Georgia, for two months. It was a temporary arrangement after the couple's house in Wisconsin was destroyed by a fire. They and their four children, ranging in age from 1 to 7, occupied a garage that had been converted into a bedroom.

Around 2 a.m. on May 28, 2014, a SWAT team consisting of Habersham County sheriff's deputies and Cornelia police offi

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