Crime & Safety

Dad to Police: 'She Shot Our Baby!'

The 17-month-old murder victim who was allegedly shot by her mother on Sunday morning was still alive when police arrived, according to the Sarasota Police Department.

When police officers arrived at the crime scene, 4000 block of Old Bradenton Road, Sarasota, around 9:45 a.m. Sunday, a man, later identified as the child’s father Sean Boice, was standing in the front doorway with a cell phone in his hand, according to a report.

When he saw the officer’s approaching, he began waving at them yelling, “They’re shot, they’re shot,” then he turned around and ran back into the residence, a report states.

When Officer Steven Heaven enquired who did the shooting, Boice said, “She shot our baby, she shot out baby.”

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Heaven reported followed Boice through the living room toward the bedroom when he observed Sarah Harnish, lying facedown in a pool of her own blood. In her right hand, which lay between her legs, she was still clutching a semiautomatic pistol that she allegedly used to shoot her own baby, then turn on herself.

Boice stepped over Harnish before the police Heaven could stop him and jumped in bed next to his small daughter Josephine Boice. He yelled, “She is still breathing!”

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Josephine had been shot in the right temple of her head but was still alive; Heaven could see her small chest heaving slowly, despite the large amount of blood she had lost.  He picked her tiny frame up from the bloodstained bed and carried her out to the Sarasota Fire Department ambulance that had just pulled in the drive, handing her to the paramedic inside.

Boice had followed Heaven outside, and then Heaven asked his partner, Jeffrey McCroskey, to say with the grieving father while he checked on Harnish.

Heaven went back inside to see if Harnish had a pulse, but unlike her tenacious daughter, she had already passed.

Josephine was rushed to All Children’s Hospital where she later died of the head wound. 


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