It was Memorial Day weekend, 2003. Carmen Harris had just moved back to South Florida after graduating from FSU.
Deloris Woods: “Graduation was very exciting. She was just ecstatic, wanted all of us to be there, my mom, my sister. We went.”
Twenty-four-year-old Carmen had gotten a degree in criminal justice and was thinking about law school, determined to do well to take care of her 3-year-old son. But DeMarco never got to know his mother.
Deloris Woods: “Some individual just decided to take her life.”
Carmen had gone to South Beach. Her friends dropped her off at her Miami Gardens home early in the morning.
Detective Terry Goldston, Miami-Dade Police: “She spoke to several friends some time after 5 a.m., basically reassuring them that she had made it home OK.”
The next time Carmen made a phone call, she dialed 911.
Detective Terry Goldston: “She tells the dispatcher that she’d been stabbed, that she could not feel her lower extremities.”
The dispatcher asked Carmen if she knew who stabbed her.
Detective Terry Goldston: “She said no, that his person was a stranger. However, she did indicate that this person was a black male.”
Carmen would never get a chance to describe her killer. Nakai found out what had happened to her sister when she got a call that Carmen was on a stretcher on the morning news.
Nakai: “‘Are you watching the news?’ I’m like, ‘Why should I be watching the news?’ And she was like, ‘Auntie Carmen is on there.'”
Carmen was dead. Ten years later, the case is cold, the killer … unknown.
Nakai: “It could have been an intruder who was already in the home probably getting ready to do something, and she walked in on him and then there was a scuffle and he overtook her.”
Detectives say the killer got into Carmen’s house by cranking open a window. The motive for killing, not clear. There was no sign of a robbery, Carmen was not sexually assaulted. Someone just came in, stabbed her, and left.
Nakai: “I’m sure someone saw something, and if they did, we really hope and pray that they would come forth and say something.”
Ten years ago a 3-year-old lost his mother .
Deloris Woods: “Something that she would have loved to do is raise DeMarco. That was her number one priority.”
Ten years later, all DeMarco has are pictures of his mother. All detectives need is a clue.
Detective Terry Goldston: “Still hoping that we can get that phone call in hopes of giving that family something to look forward to as far as, not necessarily closure but to know what actually happened to Carmen.”
Someone knows, maybe someone who lived on 191st Street in Miami Gardens in 2003 knows who killed Carmen Harris.
Deloris Woods: “Speak out, tell it. It’s not called snitching, it’s called being honest.
No one will know if you make a phone call. Give detectives a name, a direction, so they can put a face on the person who killed a 24-year-old mother in 2003. A son never got to know her. A family wants to know who killed her. Go ahead and make an anonymous call to Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers: 305-471-TIPS or 954-493-TIPS.
And if you have lost a loved one, if you would love to see the killer on the news, give us a call to remind people you are still Out for Justice. Patrick Fraser, 7News.
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