UVALDE — On the night boxer John Duane VanMeter was shot, his fiancee Sammy Arellano and her 10-year-old son were in another room while VanMeter cooked candied apples in the kitchen of her modest home they shared.

Suddenly, there was a loud noise.

“We thought it was just John banging pans around in the kitchen, because he was always loud when he cooked,” said Arellano, 29, standing on her porch Friday beside a growing collection of tall, burning candles and flower bouquets.

She and her son walked toward the kitchen. Arellano saw a figure dressed all in black, a bandanna around his face, pointing a gun.

At first she thought it was a joke. Was someone playing with her son’s BB gun? She didn’t see that John was on the floor, wounded. Frightened, she turned and headed for the bathroom with her son.

Her 9-year-old daughter joined them there, saying the black-clad figure had pointed the gun at her and told her to go away. They huddled in the bathtub, afraid the intruder still was in the house.

When police arrived moments later, the assailant was gone and VanMeter, 24, was lying in a puddle of blood on the kitchen floor, shot fatally in the head.

“When we saw that the ambulance workers weren’t rushing, we knew the news wasn’t good,” Arellano said.

VanMeter, himself the father of two young children, was pronounced dead at Uvalde Memorial Hospital.

The next morning, police arrested a 12-year-old boy and charged him with capital murder. It was the same boy who’d been staying at Arellano’s house on and off for the past two months, sleeping on the couch, and taking advantage of their compassion, she said.

On ExpressNews.com: Read more about the Uvalde shooting

“I didn’t trust the boy from the beginning,” said Norma Arellano, Sammy’s mother. “You could just smell it on him: He’s no good.”

Sammy Arenallo said the boy — who still was attending Flores Elementary School because he’d been held back — was known as a wayward child and troublemaker. He’d befriended her son, and she worried about his bad influence.

“He was always going around town, stealing stuff from convenience stores,” she said. “He would tell people he was going to kill them.”

She and VanMeter, who had been together six months and planned to marry on Valentine’s Day, recently told the boy he no longer was welcome.

“He told my son, ‘I’m gonna (mess) you up,’” Sammy Arellano said.

She said she reported the threat to the school administration but never heard back. She and her mother think VanMeter’s death may have been in retaliation for being banned from the home.

“I think he was jealous of the love Sammy and everyone has in her home,” Norma Arellano said.

The 12-year-old also stole a PlayStation game from the home, Sammy said.

The boy lived with his grandmother and his two teen sisters. Sammy said the elderly woman was “terrified” of the boy.

Child Protective Services has investigated the family situation before. A spokesman with the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services said there were no “public records” related to the child and CPS.

Norma Arellano said the boy would stay with Sammy and John for days “and no one, not the grandmother, not anyone, would come looking for him.”

Sammy met VanMeter at a local boxing event in Uvalde. He was excited about an upcoming match in Beaumont and planned to use his hoped-for winnings to buy her an engagement ring, she said.

“I was already calling him my son-in-law,” Norma Arellano said. “He was always going around saying, ‘Mom, I love (Sammy) and I’m gonna marry her!’”

Sammy said her son got a look at the 12-year-old’s eyes briefly when they saw him in the kitchen, and said he knew it was the boy who’d been staying with them intermittently.

“I really regret helping (the boy) now, but that’s how John was,” she said. “He had a big heart for everyone. He was always down to help everyone. But I blame myself for this.”

Under Texas law, children under 14 can’t be tried as adults for first-degree felonies, so the boy could be charged as a juvenile and face a maximum of 40 years in prison. Police continue to investigate the shooting.

“All we want is justice for John,” Norma said.

On ExpressNews.com: Read about another recent fatal shooting

Uvalde, about 85 miles west of San Antonio, is a town of 16,000 residents where news — and gossip — travels fast.

At the Uvalde County Junior Livestock Show, Hilda Ayala said rumors were flying that the shooting somehow was gang-related.

“That’s how gossip is — it starts as one thing and then turns into something else,” she said. “No matter what the details are, this whole thing is just so sad, such a tragedy.”

John and his father and the younger VanMeter’s boxing trainer, David Hernandez, were well-known and well-liked, she said.

“It’s just so shocking, so astonishing,” said Mary Stone, who helps organize the popular stock show. “What is going on with teenagers today? This kid is 12 years old.”

Back at Sammy’s house, her new puppy frolicked in the small yard, clueless about the sadness. Sammy said the day after her future husband was shot, she had to wash blood off the dog’s blond fur. The puppy had tried to play with John as his body laid on the kitchen floor.

Across the street, an elderly man sat on his front porch. He said he is good friends with Sammy’s 10-year-old son.

“All we can do is pray,” said the man, declining to give his name. “We must ask God, ask Jesus, to help us, all over the world.”

Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje is a staff writer in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | mstoeltje@express-news.net | Twitter: @mstoeltje