Smash hit

The singer entered the room with her head bowed but “remained strong for her family. It was very clear she was the leader,” said Mr Howard. “She held hands with her family. It was obviously a very emotional moment.”

It was an horrific end to a family tragedy, said Ms Hudson's cousin. Rev. Krista Alston, a minister at the Pleasant Gift Baptist Church in Chicago. “It's shocking. It's unreal. We had been praying that it would not come to this,” he said. “We know it's a reality now, but it's still shocking.”

A Chicago police spokeswoman, Monique Bond, confirmed that the boy, like his grandmother and uncle, had been shot. The medical examiner's office is expected to carry out an autopsy today (Tuesday).

Ms Hudson's aunt, Dorothy Hudson, said that the Chicago funeral home she owns with her husband will handle arrangements for the family, but details were pending. “We're just sad,” she said. “We're going through this stage where we're just sad and in shock.”

The police initially identified Mr Balfour as a suspect in the case, and he remains a “person of interest”. The 27-year-old baker has previous convictions for attempted murder, carjacking and possession of a stolen motor vehicle, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections. He was released from a 7-year prison sentence in May 2006 and as of Friday was still on probation.

He was not living with his estranged wife at the time of the shooting. The couple had recently fought because Mr Balfour had sold Ms Hudson’s car without her permission, according to local media reports.

Yesterday, Mr Balfour was transferred to the Illinois Department of Corrections, based on what was described as an “active parole violation unrelated to this investigation.” Januari Smith, a Corrections spokeswoman, said that he would probably remain in state custody until the Illinois Prisoner Review Board looked at his case. She would not say where he was being held.

Over the weekend, Mr Balfour’s mother protested her son’s innocence. “This is not my son that did this,” said a distraught Michele Balfour. “You cannot say my child did this. He loved Julia. He loved Julia’s mother.”

Julia Hudson, who drives a school bus for a living, made no mention of her estranged husband on Saturday when she addressed the world’s media at Pleasant Gift Mission Baptist Church in the Kenwood district of Chicago. Flanked by Greg King, 29, the father of the murdered boy, she pleaded over and over again for her son to be brought back home.

She described the child as a sensitive boy who preferred reading a book or doing some “schooling” to playing outdoors, and said that her Oscar-winning sister had been at her side since flying back to Chicago. “She flew in right away and we have been together ever since,” Ms Hudson said, adding: “We are still in a state of shock. It’s hard. We are together. We sit and we pray. Nothing else to do but pray.”

Ms Hudson had reportedly encouraged her mother to leave Englewood, the gritty South Side neighbourhood where she grew up, and where her mother had lived for two decades, but her mother had steadfastly refused.

The singer was the one to identify the bodies of her mother and brother over the weekend.

Neighbours and well-wishers brought stuffed animals and other tokens of support to a makeshift memorial outside Ms Donerson's two-story white clapboard home yesterday. A candlelight vigil was planned for last night.

A neighborhood anti-violence group signed up volunteers in front of the home and a boy gently placed a new brown teddy bear with the growing mound of tributes.

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