The gut-wrenching photographs circulated through news outlets across the nation Thursday.

A limp Ebony Archie was being carried by family members, too weak to stand, words inaudible. She had just learned that her 6-year-old son, after a night of searching, was dead.

Kingston Frazier was sleep in the backseat of Archie’s car when she ran inside of a Kroger grocery store in Jackson, Mississippi. Her Toyota Camry was running for the 10- or 15-minute trip inside around 1:15 a.m., when a Honda Civic pulled up, according to reports. Someone jumped out of it and stole the Camry with Kingston still inside.

He was found dead in the backseat of the car, which had been left near an abandoned warehouse about 12 miles from the Kroger, with a gunshot wound to the back of his head — on the morning he was due for his kindergarten graduation.

Three 17-year-old boys were arrested Thursday evening and will be charged with capital murder; they were held without bail.

Mississippi’s Clarion-Ledger newspaper detailed the relatives’ emotional reaction to the death of Kingston, including how Archie collapsed upon hearing the news and, one-by-one, the piercing screams of family members and neighbors as they heard about it.

The photos of the grief-stricken mother were too painful to bear, especially for the millions of other moms who consumed this story.

Thousands reacted on social media. Some admitted how often they leave their child in the car to run in and pay for gas or grab coffee, hitting too close to home for the mothers with young sons. Others couldn’t stomach the images. One mom said it was the saddest story she’d ever read.

The words are excruciating to read, but the photos are unbearable because it’s a tragedy too heartbreaking to imagine.

It’s nearly impossible to wrap one’s head around Kingston’s untimely fate, why the boys couldn’t let him live.

Now is a time to rally around Ebony Archie, a woman, a mother, who to the hands of monsters lost her baby boy after doing something — admittedly or not — that moms do and have done for decades.

We are sending warm thoughts to the family of Kingston Fraizer.