Ame Deal, a 10-year-old girl, was discovered dead in a locked airtight storage bin outside her family's house in Phoenix, Ariz., and despite her relatives' claim that she had accidentally locked herself inside while playing hide-and-seek, the authorities suspect foul play and said she is the victim of child abuse.

Deal died from suffocation on July 12 in a locked airtight plastic storage bin, which is less than 3 feet long, 14 inches wide and about a foot deep.

According to the police, Deal's family members, including her 62-year-old grandmother Judith Deal, 44-year-old aunt and legal guardian Cynthia Stoltzmann, and Stoltzmann's daughter Samantha and son-in-law John Allen, both 23, said that her death was actually the tragic ending of playing a hide-and-seek game that had gone horribly wrong. They said Deal accidentally locked herself inside of an airtight box.

On July 13, Stoltzmann even said on KNXV-TV, an affiliate of CNN, "She was an awesome hider, let me tell you. ... There were places she would squeeze into that I didn't think my dog could squeeze into."

However, the authorities suspect otherwise. They believe she died because of child abuse. Start the slideshow to find out the horrific cruelty Ame was subjected to by her family and how they had tortured the girl before forcibly putting her in the bin that became her coffin.

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After police investigated the incident, they began to suspect that the little girl died of child abuse, according to Phoenix police spokesman Sergeant Trent Crump.

The girl's body was found to be very dirty and with marks on her right knee apparently from "forceful contact with the interior lid," investigators reported.

One neighbor, on condition of anonymity, also said it wasn't an accident. Deal was often abused by her family, the neighbor said.

Another neighbor described seeing Ame being forced by her family to walk back and forth on the sidewalk barefoot in triple-digit temperatures.

None of the neighbors had contacted the authorities with their concerns.

Police investigators said the girl had been placed in the box at least five times in 30 days, was beaten with a wooden paddle, and forced to eat hot sauce and dog poop on several occasions, according to the Sacramento Bee.

Samantha and John Allen were arrested for first-degree murder on Wednesday after they admitted that they had locked Deal in the container as a form of punishment because she wrongly took a popsicle without permission.

Crump told Reuters that Allen also forced her do jumping jacks, backbends and other exercises for over an hour before locking her in the airtight container.

Stoltzmann and Judith Deal were arrested on suspicions of child abuse and kidnapping.

Police said the four family members abused the girl because they did not feel that she was related to them by blood.

Crump said the case shocked even veteran detectives. "This child died at the hands of those who were supposed to love and care for her. ... This case has turned the stomachs of some of our most seasoned detectives," he said.

Jileen Boydstun, Ame's second grade teacher at James Madison Elementary School in Ogden, expressed shock over the news and said she was abused by her family. "There just wasn't the affection I could feel coming from the aunt towards Ame and they would tell me they didn't really think Ame belonged to them," Boydstun said.

Ame was bright and inquisitive but "She was constantly coming to school dirty, she often had head lice. One time she came to school with cat urine in her shoes and it smelled so badly that the counselor came and cleaned her and got some shoes for her," the teacher added.

The counselor, Jody Hansen, said they had contacted the local Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS) to teach the family parenting skills as she was kind of a scapegoat in the family."

"She was the one that got the brunt of everything, that was pretty obvious," Hansen said.

Cynthia Stoltzmann's brother David Deal, whose name is recorded as Ame's father in her birth certificate records, doesn't believe that he is her biological father and he had left her in care of Stoltzmann and others.

The local Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS) got in touch with the family but soon thereafter they withdrew Ame from the school.

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, who will prosecute this case, said Ame's case is the worst child abuse he has seen in his career as a child victim advocate and "other cases pale in comparison."