Lisa North, the mother of missing 6-year-old Ahlittia North, cries in the arms of her mother, Rene’ Johnson, right.

The search for a missing suburban New Orleans girl ended grimly Tuesday when her body was found in a trash can near her home, police said.

Six-year-old Ahlittia North’s body was found dumped in a trash bin just 100 feet from the Harvey apartment she vanished from either late Friday or early Saturday, New Orleans’ Times-Picayune newspaper reported.

“They could have brought her back home, but they killed her and put her in a trash can,” her mother, Lisa North, sobbed to the newspaper.

North said Jefferson Parish authorities contacted her at around 1 a.m. Tuesday to let her know her daughter’s body had been found.

“I just want to know why?” she said. “What did she do? What did we do?”

Authorities planned to address the girl’s death at a 3 p.m. news conference.

A relative, Matthew Flugence, 20, was named as a person of interest in the case, though police weren’t able to interview him as of early Tuesday afternoon.

According to the Times Picayune, Flugence is wanted for the alleged sexual assault of a different 11-year-old girl, and he once lived with North and her husband, Albert Hill, 46, at the apartment Ahlittia went missing from.

Police searched a nearby apartment where Flugence lived with his brother, and the brother was taken in for questioning, cops said.

North, 20, said she last saw her daughter at around 11 p.m. Friday asleep in her bedroom at their home.

When she woke up at around 9 a.m. on Saturday, North said the little girl’s bed was empty.

A comforter on the bed, a toothbrush and some toothpaste were also missing, the Times-Picayune reported.