Detroit, MI – A shattered Detroit mother is struggling to make sense of an unimaginable nightmare after her trusted friend admitting to killing her 3-year-old daughter in a sickening outburst of violence. What began as a typical weekend of having little Harmoni Henderson babysat by her close friend Iesha Harris ended in complete tragedy.
“She was my baby…my everything,” the grieving mother told reporters through tears, too distraught to show her face on camera. “How could someone do this to a child?”
Harris, 30, has been charged with murder after confessing to pouring scorching hot water on the defenseless toddler’s head and body, burning her severely. If that vengeful act against a nonverbal, autistic child wasn’t cruel enough, police say Harris then slammed Harmoni’s head into a bathtub with tremendous force.
The vicious attack came after the single mother had asked her close friend to watch little Harmoni overnight that Sunday while she worked a shift. Harmoni’s mom had known Harris for years, which is why she never could have predicted her daughter was in such grave danger.
“She looked at my baby like she was her own,” the mother painfully recalled. At one point, Harmoni was happily playing with Harris’ own young daughter as the two were locked away together for hours.
But sometime after Harris returned home from spending three hours out smoking marijuana with friends, prosecutors allege she snapped after finding Harmoni had vomited. Boiling over with rage, the callous caregiver unleashed an unthinkable level of brutality on the innocent child.
After the savage attack, Harris brazenly tried covering her tracks. When the worried mother called to check on Harmoni’s wellbeing, the cruel friend claimed the girl had simply fallen down some stairs and bumped her head. Nothing to worry about.
It wasn’t until the next morning when the devastated mother arrived to pick up her first-born child that the unimaginable was realized. Harmoni was deceased, clinging to life no more from the extensive injuries.
“I would never in one million years think she was capable of this…to my baby,” the shattered mother grieved. “Even if you think you can trust someone, I guess you really can’t.”
As Harmoni’s loved ones reel from this nightmare, so too does a community grasping to understand How? And more importantly, Why? Why would any person, let alone a trusted caregiver, brutalizeand take the life of a tiny toddler, one already facing challenges with her autism and inability to verbally communicate?
The disturbing case has cast a pall over Detroit. For one family, the unforgettable darling Harmoni is gone forever at the hands of a violent monster they once trusted as a friend. The profound betrayal may never make sense amongst their life sentence of unimaginable grief.
