On the same day that Tonya Rodgers was shot dead in her Clairton apartment while her 4-year-old daughter hid upstairs, police began eyeing the little girl's father, Ulysses Cager, as the prime suspect.

Working quickly on Dec. 23, Allegheny County homicide detectives spoke with neighbors, one of whom heard the disturbance and recalled a man with a distinctive "raspy" voice.

They interviewed Cager's two sons, who discounted their father's story that he was home on the night in question.

And they administered a polygraph test, which Cager failed.

But it wasn't until the couple's daughter, Justice, told a psychologist, her aunt and a preschool teacher that her father had shot her mother that police could act.

On Thursday detectives arrested Cager, 46, a jitney driver from the South Side, on one count of criminal homicide.

A police affidavit indicated that Cager and Rodgers, 26, were embroiled in a dispute over custody of their daughter.

Cager has a preliminary hearing May 17 at the coroner's office.