For Alacia Ford-Barron, the news landed like another blow. Her 18-year-old daughter, Myrah Zeigler, was shot and killed earlier this year. The man accused of killing her — 19-year-old Larry Smith — is sitting in jail awaiting trial, denied bail. But this week, a judge signed off on something Ford-Barron says she never could have imagined: temporary release so Smith could attend his father’s funeral.

It’s a decision Ford-Barron says she learned about only after it was already made. Speaking to Banfield on Wednesday, she described it as “a slap in my face.”

“For this young man to take my daughter’s life and just freely walk out of jail to be able to hug his mother, to be able to hug his family, to be able to sit in his bed, to be able to breathe the air that my daughter would not be able to breathe…” she said, trailing off. The thought of it, she added, is unbearable.

Ford-Barron said she wasn’t consulted — not before the hearing, not before the paperwork was signed, not before Smith was escorted out of jail for the day. She says she found out only after calling the victim advocate’s office. By then, it was too late to speak up in court.

“I can’t go to her grave and bring her back,” she said. “How can you let an accused killer out? How?”

Former Broward County judge Tarlika Nunez-Navarro echoed her frustration, noting the case is unfolding in her old jurisdiction. “I was surprised, and I was extremely disappointed to see it happened in the county I sat in,” she said. “These are my colleagues. I would never talk poorly about them, but I do question this decision.”

Smith, according to court records, remains in custody while awaiting trial for murder and has been denied bail. Prosecutors opposed his temporary release, but the judge allowed it under what’s called a “funeral furlough,” a rare permission granted to inmates in certain circumstances.

In Ford-Barron’s view, those circumstances shouldn’t apply to someone accused of taking a life. She says the decision not only reopens her wounds but undermines her trust in the system. “If I had known, I would have been there to say what I needed to say to stop him,” she said.

For now, she’s left with questions — about why she wasn’t told, about whether this could happen again, and about how a justice system that kept Smith in jail without bail could still let him walk out, even for a day.