Left: Iesha Harris (Detroit Police Dept.). Right: Harmoni Henderson (GoFundMe).
A woman, aged 31, from Michigan has been sentenced to spend many years in prison for killing the 3-year-old daughter of her friend. She brutally attacked the child to death while babysitting last year, enraged because the little girl had vomited on herself and interrupted her while she was smoking marijuana.
Judge Kelly Ramsey from the Third Judicial Circuit made the ruling on Thursday for Iesha Harris to spend 28 to 50 years in a state prison for the heinous murder of Harmoni Henderson. Harris admitted guilt earlier this month to a charge of second-degree murder related to Harmoni’s death. Initially, she faced charges of felony murder and first-degree child abuse. By agreeing to the lesser charge of murder, the district attorney’s office dropped the other charges.
During the sentencing, Harmoni’s mother, Paris England, addressed the court and expressed her frustration with Harris for not being truthful about her daughter’s murder.
“What’d she do? You can’t even tell me the truth about what happened,” she said directly to Harris, Detroit Fox affiliate WJBK reported. “My baby was three. You were at her birthday party right before, right there next to me. You always been next to me. And for you to kill her, for what?”
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Harris reportedly had her attorney read a short statement in which she apologized for the pain she had caused Harmoni’s family, saying she will “forever be broken” because of what she did.
As Law&Crime previously reported, officers with the Detroit Police Department at about 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, March 17, 2024, responded to a residence in the 15700 block of Southfield Freeway, which is about 12 miles southwest of Detroit. Prosecutors said that Harris was a longtime friend of Harmoni’s mother and had been babysitting the child when the victim suffered her fatal injuries.
Harmoni was privately transported to a local hospital for treatment, but succumbed to her injuries and was pronounced dead. Authorities say that the cause of Harmoni’s death was “blunt force trauma caused by the defendant.”
Harris was formally charged and arrested on March 20, 2025.
Capt. Laurie Carter, the head of the Detroit Police Special Victims Unit, provided some additional details about the investigation into Harmoni’s death in an interview with Detroit NBC affiliate WDIV.
Carter was one of the officers who responded to the hospital where Harmoni’s mother and Harris had taken the victim.
“When I arrived at the hospital, the child had already been conveyed by the mother and also the friend,” Carter told the station shortly after the tragic incident. “The child was deceased when I arrived.”
Carter added that the details of Harmoni’s death left her “very disturbed.”
“Nothing like this should ever happen to a child,” she said.
“She was having a hard time. My baby is autistic, nonverbal,” the mother told the station. “I think she got frustrated with her, plus her own daughter, and she slammed my baby’s head against the tub.”
Harmoni’s mother said that prior to the violent outburst, she trusted Harris “wholeheartedly.”
Authorities reportedly told WDIV that Harris was watching Harmoni for the night and at some point locked the toddler in a room with her own 1-year-old child for about three hours while she smoked marijuana. When she returned to the room, she allegedly found that Harmoni had thrown up on herself and became irate.
“Ms. Harris allegedly admitted to police she poured scalding water on top of the 3-year-old and slammed her head against the side of the bathtub,” Assistant Prosecutor Jennifer Douglas told WDIV.
The scalding water was allegedly poured on Harmoni’s head and face, Detroit Fox affiliate WJBK reported. The station also reported that when Harmoni’s mother called Harris to check in on her daughter, Harris told her that the child had fallen down the stairs and bumped her head, but was otherwise fine. The following morning, Harmoni’s mother reportedly came to pick her up and found the child in bed unresponsive.
“She was already dead from the moment I got there,” the mother told WJBK. “She was gone.”
