Barbara Green, 29, sang to her father, Freddie Emberton, in the final hours of his life.

Emberton, 51, died Friday at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, one day after the Bowling Green Police Department found him badly beaten and unconscious on Lewis Avenue, not far from where he lived with a friend, Angela Guess.

Police have not released Emberton’s cause of death.

“Official autopsy results have not been received yet,” said Officer Monica Woods, spokeswoman for the BGPD.

The BGPD arrested a third teenage boy Monday in connection with Emberton’s death, Woods said. The three boys, who are 15, 16 and 17, are charged with murder by complicity. Their names have not been released because they are juveniles.

Emberton had severe injuries to his head, said Green of Bowling Green. He did not have injuries to any other part of his body. A doctor showed Green a scan of her father’s brain, telling her that the injuries were so severe that his brain was pushed to one side of his skull. He would never regain consciousness, she said. Emberton suffered eight fractures to one side of his face.

“It was the hardest decision I have ever made in my entire life,” she said about removing her father from life support.

Doctors urged her to make the decision the night he was brought in to the hospital. But she waited another day hoping for different news about his condition.

“I wanted so bad for him to open his eyes and talk to me because I just wanted more time with my dad,” she said as she cried. “It’s just not fair.”

The two had spent Thanksgiving and Christmas together. Emberton didn’t take a drink on Christmas as he spent time with his only child and only grandchild, Heaven LaShae Marie Stowers, Green said.

“We got to spend Christmas together,” she said. “That was nice.”

Doctors told Green that they would have had to attach tubes into her father’s throat and stomach and that he would have had to live in a vegetative state for the rest of his life, something he had said many years ago that he would never want after his only son died at 3 months old from choking on a feeding tube.

Green was just getting to know her father well after seeing him only off and on as a child. Her parents divorced when she was young. When Green’s younger brother died, her father started drinking to ease his pain.

Emberton had a long history of alcohol-related arrests in Warren County but “that’s not reason for anybody to kill him,” Green said.

“He just really had a hard time when my brother passed away,” Green said.

“My dad was a good guy,” she said. “He wouldn’t have hurt nobody, and he doesn’t deserve what happened to him. I don’t know why anybody would have done that to him.”

Kim Mills, a family friend who, along with her sister, Guess, thought of Emberton as an uncle, said Emberton loved children.

“The most important thing to him was his family and friends,” Mills said. “He was wonderful to our children.”

“He would watch my kids when I wouldn’t let anyone else keep them,” Mills said. “He was one person I knew I could trust with my kids.”

Mills’ children, who are 4 and 8 years old, loved Emberton and “will miss him dearly,” she said.

“My 8-year-old is having a tough time with it,” Mills said.

Emberton became a family friend to Mills and Guess when their aunt married Emberton’s sister. Emberton lived with Mills’ and Guess’ parents, Ronnie and Connie Guess, off and on for many years. When he wasn’t living at their home in the county, he would stay with Angela Guess on Lewis Avenue.

The night, that Emberton never returned home. He had left Angela’s house to make a quick run to a market. He was carrying only $1.26 on him, Mills said.

“My main question is why did they do him like that,” Mills said.