A Newport News woman was charged with murder Tuesday after she stabbed her infant son to death and also stabbed and seriously wounded another child, police said.
Police Chief Steven Drew said the baby’s father — the woman’s fiancé — called 911 in hysterics at about 9:30 p.m. Monday, concerned about a text message he had just gotten from the mother.
“She described the scene that he would see when he came home,” Drew said of the message.
Police went to the apartment, in the 300 block of Hilltop Drive, north of Oakland Industrial Park and not far from Fort Eustis. Officers “made entry into … what I would call a horrific scene,” Drew said.
They found the body of 10-month-old Zell Howard, in a bedroom. The baby boy had been stabbed to death.
The older child, an 8-year-old girl, was found stabbed in the same bedroom. She was flown to Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters in Norfolk, where Drew said she was in critical but stable condition Tuesday.
“Both of them were stabbed multiple times,” Drew said. “All over the body … We’re not dealing with an adult body. We’re dealing with an 8-year-old and a 10-month-old, right? So any stab wound is critical.”
A pocket knife, about 2.5 inches long, was found nearby, Drew said. No other children were in the apartment.
The children’s mother, Sarah Whitney Ganoe, 35, was at home when police arrived. She was immediately taken into custody, then taken to a hospital for treatment of “superficial injuries,” Drew said.
Ganoe was later taken to police headquarters, where Drew said she spoke with detectives after being read her Miranda rights.
“She was here for a while,” Drew said, declining to elaborate on the length of the interview or what Ganoe told detectives.
Ganoe was charged Tuesday with one count each of second-degree murder and malicious wounding, and two counts apiece of felony child abuse and using a knife in a felony. She’s being held without bond at the Newport News City Jail.
No one answered the door Tuesday at the apartment, at the Residences at Cedar Hill complex, off of Warwick Boulevard. A mat at the apartment’s front door read, “It’s just a bunch of Hocus Pocus.”
Ganoe’s black Volkswagen was parked outside the home, with the base to a baby car seat and a toy green truck in the back seat, and a bat design cover over the front seat.
A neighbor who lives in an adjacent apartment told the Daily Press she didn’t hear any unusual noises until well after police arrived.
Another neighbor in the complex, Buck Wright, said he would always say hello to the family, who seemed nice, and said he was shocked at what happened.
Police have responded to some “domestic disturbance-type” complaints at the apartment “a couple of times already this year,” Drew said. He said he’s talking with other city agencies to see if they’ve had any interaction with the family.
“What will take place now is trying to understand the ‘why’ in the history,” he said. “Those things are ongoing … Without going into it, let me just say this — for two children, one to be killed and the other to be hurt like that, there’s obviously issues there.”
Drew said he’s proud of his department — from the dispatchers to the responding officers to forensic technicians to the detectives — for the way they handled the response.
He credited the initial dispatcher for her calm demeanor while taking the call from Ganoe’s fiancé, and clearly relaying to the officers “what they’d be walking into in a very, very highly stressful situation.”
“The officers who went across the threshold and into that apartment, the things they saw, they will remember for the rest of their careers,” Drew added. One of the first officers at the scene, he said, graduated from the police academy only a few weeks ago.
Drew said he’s mandated that 10 to 15 officers, dispatchers and forensic technicians who worked the scene meet with the police department’s psychologist.
“We’re all human,” Drew said. “Anything dealing with a child is particularly challenging for us in this profession.”
He said that he and Assistant Police Chief Mike Grinstead were going to Norfolk on Tuesday afternoon to visit the 8-year-old at CHKD.
“There’s multiple people who work here in this building who told me that they’re going to go home and hug their kid today, their child,” Drew said. “So I think that’s good advice for everyone. … They’re a gift.”
Peter Dujardin, 757-247-4749, pdujardin@dailypress.com
Jessica Nolte, 757-912-1675, jnolte@dailypress.com
