"My wife just shot her kids:" Husband sobs, reports girls' killings in 911 call
HENDERSON COUNTY, Texas -- The husband of a north Texas mother accused of shooting her two young daughters Thursday is heard sobbing on a series of 911 calls released by the Henderson County Sheriff's office.
Henderson County Sheriff Botie Hillhouse says 29-year-old Sarah Nicole Henderson confessed to shooting the girls, 5 and 7, in a Payne Springs home, but showed no remorse.
In a 911 call placed early Thursday, Henderson's husband Jacob Henderson can be heard crying as he tells a dispatcher, "My wife, my wife just shot her kids."
It wasn't the first time that night Jacob Henderson had called first responders. Hillhouse says deputies were first summoned around 11:30 Wednesday night to the home after emergency medical services received a call about a possibly suicidal woman.
"My wife she's like, I don't know. Something's going on with her. Like, she's freaking out like somebody's out to get her," Jacob Henderson said in the first call. "She won't listen to me. She won't talk to me."
A few minutes later, however, he called back and said he wanted to cancel the call for help and that "she's fine now."
Deputies responded anyway, and Henderson and her husband reported no problems.
About three hours later, however, Henderson's husband called again -- this time frantic -- reporting that his wife had just shot her two daughters.
Hillhouse told the station that Henderson also tried to shoot her husband, but the gun jammed. Jacob Henderson took the gun from her and called police, Hillhouse said.
In the background of the call, a woman can be heard crying and yelling, "What did I do?" and "God please forgive me, please."
"She's trying to commit suicide now, she's trying to choke herself," Henderson is heard saying.
Jacob Henderson tells the dispatcher he was asleep when the shootings happened. When a dispatcher asks if the children were breathing, he sobs, "No."
A woman is heard saying, "Why did I do that, babe?"
Jacob Henderson responds, "I don't know."
"She keeps saying people are coming," Jacob Henderson tells a dispatcher. "There's nobody even here."
Deputies returned to the scene and found the two young girls dead, the station reports. Their bodies have been taken for examination to Dallas, about 60 miles to the northwest.
Jacob Henderson is reportedly not the father of the two girls, Kaylee and Kenlie.
Hillhouse told the station that Henderson planned the killings for at least two weeks but didn't detail why investigators believe she plotted the killings, and a motive hasn't been released.
The murders have left family, friends and neighbors in shock.
"There's no reason for this, none at all," neighbor Bridget Golds told CBS DFW. "How could someone do this to them?"
Jaylyne Palmer, who lives across the street, described the girls as "adorable" and said they would often come over to her home on their bicycles.
She told CBS DFW she would hear Henderson yelling at the girls all the time, very loudly from the porch. But Palmer said she never heard or saw any other alarming behavior.
"Not easy to think about. (They're) innocent little girls. It breaks our hearts," said Palmer.
Officials with Texas Child Protective Services confirmed to the station that there had been contact with the family in 2011, but said the details were confidential.
Friday, bond was set at $2 million on a capital murder charge. Henderson remains behind bars and on suicide watch.