Kamille “Cupcake” McKinney’s cousin and best friend – 3-year-old Ava – provided family members with the first clue about what may have happened the night she disappeared from Tom Brown Village public housing community.

“Cupcake got in the car with that man. He took her to get candy at the store,’’ Ava told her mother. “I not want no candy.”

Shenita Long, Ava’s mother, testified in the second day of the federal kidnapping trial against Patrick Stallworth.

Long was one of at least nine witnesses to take the stand Tuesday, including a 14-year-old who said Stallworth, 42, approached her earlier that Saturday, Oct. 12, 2019, and offered her candy.

Other witnesses included a neighbor of Stallworth who said he had been confronted multiple times about offering candy to children in the Center Point apartment complex where he lived.

A woman also said she confronted Stallworth and his girlfriend, Derick Brown, because they were parked in front of her home where her own children usually played.

Evidence presented to the jury included a bloodstained plastic mattress covering taken from Stallworth and Brown’s apartment, as well as a store receipt showing Stallworth had bought $18.91 worth of candy from the Shell service station near Tom Brown Village.

Stallworth and Brown, 32, are both charged federally with kidnapping and conspiracy to kidnap a minor.

Brown’s trial is set for Nov. 14 in federal court in Tuscaloosa. The U.S. Department of Justice previously ruled it will not seek the death penalty in the federal charges.

Both still are charged with capital murder in state court. No state trial dates have yet been set.

Long, who is the cousin and best friend of Cupcake’s mother, April Thomas, said the children were outside playing at a birthday party in Tom Brown Village on Oct. 12, 2019, when Cupcake vanished.

Long said they first became aware Cupcake was missing when her brother, Amari, said he couldn’t find her when it was time to come.

“He ran back inside with a scream that you’ll never forget,’’ Long said. “We got up and down down the stairs.”

When Long got to her daughter, she asked if Ava had seen Cupcake. Ava told her she had left with a man.

“She looked lost, like she didn’t know what was going,’’ Long said of her daughter.

Friends and family, Long said, then launched an immediate search, going door-to-door and to nearby stores in search of the missing girl.

They searched anywhere from 25 to 40 minutes until they found Cupcake’s shoes at the rear of the complex. “That’s when we really knew something was wrong,’’ Long said. “It’s time to call the police. This is serious.”

FBI Special Agent Eric Salvadore, who investigates violent crimes against children, said authorities quickly got a description of a blue Toyota Sequoia as the possible suspect vehicle in Cupcake’s kidnapping.

The vehicle, investigators would learn, was registered to Brown and found the day after the abduction at the apartment complex on Shadowood Circle where the couple lived.

Salvadore said investigators used video surveillance to help compile a timeline of Stallworth’s whereabouts on the day of the abduction.

At 12:02 p.m. that Saturday, Stallworth was seen on video at the Shell Station on Messer Airport Highway where he bought the candy.

Stallworth’s lawyer, Birmingham attorney Derrick Collins, during cross examination, said that Stallworth bought a lot of candy because he was trying to quit smoking.

At 12:11 p.m., according to video evidence, the Toyota Sequoia was seen driving through Hayes K-8, which is on the east side of Tom Brown Village. That video showed the SUV traveling through the school area and, moments later, adolescent girls running away.

One of those girls testified Tuesday.

Now 14, she said she was 12 at the time and leaving cheerleading practice at Hayes when she was approached by the Sequoia. The man inside asked the girl if she knew someone, she said, and then asked her if she wanted some candy.

One of her friends, she said, told her to run and she did so. She described the ordeal as “weird.”

The girl was asked Tuesday if she saw that man in the courtroom. She stood up, looked around and said she did not see him.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Brittany Byrd then told the girl to look toward the front of the courtroom and at that point, the young witness got upset.

The judge told her she could nod if she recognized Stallworth and she nodded yes.

Stallworth’s appearance has changed dramatically since 2019. He is heavier and now wears glasses.

Under cross examination by Collins, the girl acknowledged that Stallworth did not ask her to get in his SUV.

Another witness, Shatanya Osborne, said about 6:30 p.m. Saturday, she spotted two people – Stallworth and Brown – parked outside her home where her children usually play.

Osborne said she went out and asked them why they were there. Brown told her that she was looking for someone, and also that she used to live in the townhome that Osborne now lived in.

Brown said that when she lived there, a lot of children used to play in the neighborhood and asked Osborne why there weren’t a lot of kids outside playing.

“It didn’t strike me as odd at the time,’’ Osborne said, but later added that Brown seemed unusually fascinated with children.

Of Stallworth, Osborne said, “The man never looked at me or said anything.”

Deborah Douglas, who lived in the apartment above Stallworth and Brown on Shadowood Circle, said she heard about Cupcake’s abduction and had seen photos released by police of the possible suspect vehicle.

Douglas thought she recognized it, and went outside on Sunday, Oct. 13, and spotted the Sequoia in the parking lot.

Normally, Douglas said, the SUV was parked forward but on that day it had been backed into a parking space in front of a burned-out building adjacent to their building.

Brown was in the vehicle. “She was looking nervous,’’ Douglas testified.

Under questioning by Collins, Douglas said she did not see Stallworth that Sunday.

Douglas called police to tell them the vehicle’s whereabouts.

She also testified that about a month earlier, Stallworth had offered candy to children in their apartment complex.

Asked if he had been confronted about that, Douglas said, “He had been confronted a couple of times. It made people uncomfortable.”

FBI Special Agent Jonathan Spaeth, who is based out of Missouri, is on the FBI’s Child Abduction Rapid Deployment team and was sent to Birmingham on Oct. 14, 2019, to join in the search for Cupcake.

He, along with several Birmingham police detectives, interviewed Stallworth who told them he and Brown were at Tom Brown Village so that Brown could talk to the father of her children. At that point, Brown did not have custody of any of her six kids.

Stallworth told investigators he got out of the SUV to walk around because he didn’t get along with the man Brown was going to talk to and he didn’t want to get into a fight with him.

While he was walking around, Stallworth said, he encountered what is believed to be Cupcake and Ava, and said they were playing with a mouse trap that contained a mouse.

Stallworth said he told the children, “Nah, don’t play with that,” and offered them some Now and Later candy, which again he said he had because he was trying to quit smoking.

That encounter was captured on the video surveillance system from a home that backs up to Tom Brown Village. The encounter took place at 8:02 p.m., which is when authorities believe Cupcake was abducted.

FBI Special Agent Kyle King said he was part of the team that carried out a search warrant at Stallworth and Brown’s apartment on Oct. 18 while the search for Cupcake was still ongoing.

They went to the apartment just after 6:30 p.m. and, once inside, spotted what appeared to be blood stains on the plastic covering two pink mattresses stacked in the apartment.

At that point, King said, they secured the apartment and requested the FBI’s Evidence Response Team.

Jurors saw photos of the apartment, both inside and outside. Those photos showed evidence markers placed in four spots on the plastic covering the top mattress, and at least eight locations on the bottom mattress.

One of the plastic coverings was held up in the courtroom for jurors to see.

Testimony will resume on Wednesday.