A Florida man fatally shot his wife of 33 years and mother of his five children after suspecting her of cheating on him.
Police say Eddie Harris shot and killed his wife Shanica Harris in their Liberty City home before turning the gun on himself on Saturday night. The couple’s 2 grandchildren were in the house at the time of the shooting. They were not injured.
Neighbors called 911 to report gunshots in the house at 24th Avenue and 60th Street around 8:51 pm.
Police arriving on the scene saw two men running from the 2-story stucco home. The men said Eddie Harris shot his wife inside the house and he had a long rifle with him.
Harris was arrested after a stand-off with SWAT officers. The grandchildren, ages 6 and 9, were rescued through an open window.
The Harrises shared 5 children and three grandchildren. They met when they were both 15.
“He barricaded himself in the house and kept my sister at blood death, with my grandniece and grandnephew in the house,” Shanica’s sister, Thomasina Goddard, told Local 10 News.
Just one week earlier, Eddie bought his wife a new Mercedes-Benz SUV. Shanica took to Facebook.com to complain that she didn’t get the color she wanted. Shanica said she preferred the color red.
“Now he knows I love red cars!!! But OMG!!!!!! Why couldn’t I pick out my own car,” she wrote on September 21.
Facebook friends say Eddie Harris suffered from psychological problems and delusions. They say his mind hasn’t been right since his namesake son, Eddie Harris Jr., 19, was shot dead in the street in 2016.
Eddie and Shanica posed with a standup cut out image of Eddie Jr. at an event in his honor in 2016.
On September 27 Eddie wrote a series of Facebook posts about his wife cheating on him and setting him up to be killed.
In one post featuring a photo of a grey Mercedes SUV, he wrote: “I f*cked up buying this car for the wrong girl shanicaharris.”
In another post, he wrote: “…my wife Shanicaharris cheating on the train now she playing sick on the job.”
In other posts he wrote that his wife had a boyfriend who drove past the house in a white Impala.
“Shanica Harris got them trying to kill me,” he wrote. Shanica was dead hours later.
