AIKEN, S.C. (WRDW/WAGT) – Arrest warrants released Monday say both parents of 4-year-old Javeayah Harris showed “extreme indifference to human life” in connection with the child’s death, contradicting the account given in a 911 call made by the girl’s mother last week.
Michilae Herring called Aiken County 911 just before 9 p.m. Tuesday, telling dispatchers her daughter had been playing outside and vanished. When dispatchers asked whether Javeayah had any health issues, Herring mentioned autism, though no formal diagnosis had been made.
The Aiken community gathered for a vigil for 4-year-old Javeayah Harris on Sunday, days after community members helped search for the young girl.
“She’s very smart. She can carry a full conversation,” Herring said during the call.
In the 911 recording that was released Monday, Herring also told dispatchers she was 39 weeks pregnant and said she could not keep up with her daughter the way she normally would.
The arrest warrants state that both parents failed to seek medical attention for Javeayah after she suffered an injury from physical abuse at the hands of Herring.
The warrants identify the second suspect as Johmarea Harris, the girl’s father.
The arrest warrants say both parents confessed.
Both parents have been arrested and charged with homicide by child abuse. Both were denied bond.
READ THE WARRANTS:
Herring faces an additional charge of filing a false police report.
Herring called authorities last week to report her daughter missing. After a mᴀssive search, authorities said Saturday they think the girl had been ᴅᴇᴀᴅ for a month before she was reported missing.
Transcript of 911 call
Emergency, 39 Hillsborough Street.
I can’t find my baby.
Yes, ma’am.
She was outside playing and I came out here after cooking dinner a little bit, and I’m looking for her, but I don’t see her nowhere.
How old is this baby?
She’s 4.
All right, what was she wearing?
She has little pink Minnie Mouse pajamas. And she had me in pink beads, she had braids …
OK, how long ago did you see her, ma’am? What was the last time you saw her?
I just came up here like no less than 20 or 30 minutes. I went in the house to cook dinner, and that’s really hard. It’s time to come in once it starts getting dark. And when I came out here, I just.
OK, just just take a breath for me, OK? I already have them on the way to you, OK. Do you know where she might be heading? OK, you have any family or friends that live around the area?
No, but she usually try to take our taking big cats for me and I just I’ve been looking through the woods and try to see if I see her, but I don’t I don’t see her nowhere.
What’s your name?
My name is Michilae.
What’s her name?
Harris.
Harris. I couldn’t hear the first name.
Spelled JAVEAYAH. I wasn’t out here. I’m 39 weeks pregnant. I can’t keep up with her like that.
OK? And what anybody else out there with her like that was out there with her? Any friends, kids playing with her?
The way our yard is set up is nothing …
Does she have any health issues, any mental issues, anything like that?
She was attending but she’s just now trying to force but they don’t have no diagnosis all the way.
OK.
She’s very smart, though she don’t seem on that. She talk, Yeah, yeah, she could carry a full conversation.
OK, You didn’t see any vehicles before you went inside or anything like that? …
I came out here together and I can’t even find this OK. There are certain place she likes to play outside usually. The chicken coop, and that’s usually where I find out everything and I just look in here and see she’s not in here.
OK. Is there any bodies of water nearby?
Oh, I don’t know, ma’am. Me and my husband just now purchasing this house. I don’t know about this area much, but it’s it’s not a good area. I’ll tell you that. It’s not good.
OK, you said you searched the woods. Is that behind your house?
Yes, it’s it’s like a pathway right behind my house. And we, we usually take the dogs sometimes in the woods to just let them run and she’ll come. So I know she knows. That’s all it did. Oh, down the same way that we won’t, you know, I don’t see her. …
Have you checked with neighbors to see if they have seen her?
No ma’am, I’m literally like I called you like 10 minutes after I stepped outside. The cops are pulling up right now.
Alright, go ahead and talk to them, OK?
In Fairfield County
On Monday, law enforcement agencies were back out searching in Fairfield County − apparently for the girl’s body.
The search is taking place not far from where the parents are originally from, about two hours north of Aiken.
It was taking place near Debutary Creek in an area that leads to Rocky Creek Lake. The area is also known as “Stumpy Pond” because of the stumps and trees in the water — good for fishing, but difficult to navigate, and likely challenging for crews searching the water.
There was a steady flow of vehicles coming and going, but no one is allowed down the access road unless they are law enforcement. The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources had the largest presence, along with the Fairfield County Sheriff’s Office and Fairfield County firefighters. There were multiple unmarked vehicles, and SLED has been here as well.
On Saturday, members of Harris’ family — who live nearby — also came to the scene in tears, looking for information. Some said they learned about the situation through social media after noticing the law enforcement presence. So far, they have not been given answers, and there have been no official updates.
Bond denied
The parents were denied bond after separate hearings on Sunday.
During Michilae’s hearing Sunday at around 10:30 a.m., we learned that based on her filing a false police report, Herring will be held without bond. No attorneys were present for her.
Herring told Magistrate Judge Ronald Thornton she works for Transcom, paid biweekly at $1,300. The judge ruled that the income is too high to qualify for a court-appointed attorney.
When Thornton asked if anyone else lived in her household, she said “the father,” saying he worked at DHL.
Thornton said that Herring’s first court appearance is set for Sept. 18 at 9 a.m.
Meanwhile, a newborn Herring gave birth to a few days ago has been placed in the custody of a family member, authorities said.
Johmarea Harris’s hearing was held at around 1:30 p.m. Sunday, and he was also denied bond. The bond will be transferred to a circuit court judge, who will hear the bond within 30 days.
His first court appearance is also set for Sept. 19 at 9 a.m.
Thornton found Johmarea was also not qualified for a court-appointed attorney. Thornton originally asked him if he was qualified, and he struggled to answer. Johmarea eventually said he works for DHL Bridgestone and didn’t know how much he brings in weekly.
💔 STELLA PARTON BREAKS HER SILENCE — What She Said About Dolly’s Health Has Fans Looking Back
Dolly Parton’s Sister Breaks Silence What Really Happened - GMT - G1
Stella Parton was born May 4, 1949, the sixth of twelve children raised by Robert Lee and Avie Lee Parton in Sevierville, Tennessee — a household defined by noise, limited money, and almost no privacy, the kind of environment that produced strong, determined personalities.
Stella was one of them.
By seven, she was appearing alongside her older sister Dolly on a Knoxville television program; by her teens, she was writing her own songs, though marriage and motherhood pulled music to the margins of her life for a stretch.
The dream never fully disappeared.
In 1967, she recorded a gospel album with her mother and sisters, and later worked clubs in Washington, D.C., before founding her own record label in 1975 and releasing “I Want to Hold You in My Dreams Tonight,” which climbed to number nine on the country charts.
Long before any of that commercial success, Stella had already shown a willingness to take positions others avoided.
At 26, amid backlash against Australian singer Olivia Newton-John for winning recognition in country music, Stella recorded “Ode to Olivia” in her defense — a stand that offered her no career benefit and real risk of criticism, but one she took anyway simply because she believed staying silent was the wrong choice.
That instinct defined the rest of her career: hits like “The Danger of a Stranger” and “Steady as the Rain” (written by Dolly) built a genuine, independent following, including in the U.K., while Stella also worked in New York theater and spoke openly, often controversially, about poverty, domestic violence, and the treatment of women in the music industry.
She was named the Christian Country Music Association’s Female Vocalist of the Year in 2004.
Through all of it, she remained defined publicly, more often than not, as simply “Dolly’s little sister” — a label she spent five decades quietly proving didn’t tell the full story.
That same directness is why her comments in the fall of 2025 carried real weight.
Stella had never positioned herself as the family’s image manager or spokesperson; she was, by reputation, someone who believed difficult truths shouldn’t stay hidden indefinitely.
What she described wasn’t dramatic or accusatory — it was a portrait of a woman who had spent years prioritizing everyone else’s needs over her own.
The context mattered.
Carl Dean, Dolly’s husband of nearly sixty years, died in March 2025 at 82, after a long illness during which Dolly had devoted herself almost entirely to his care.
She later acknowledged that in the process, she’d neglected her own health significantly.
The loss reverberated through the whole extended family — the Partons had lost three brothers in the years surrounding this period, compounding grief that, for a family that had once crowded twelve children into a single small home, meant losing pieces of a shared childhood one after another.
Stella herself went seven years without releasing new music during this stretch, later describing the period simply as one shaped by sorrow, while still speaking about the importance of finding moments of laughter within it.
Looking back, one moment reads very differently in hindsight than it did at the time: in late September 2025, Dolly postponed her planned Las Vegas residency, citing health challenges — a rare cancellation for a performer whose six-decade career had included very few of them.
At the time, most fans treated it as a minor, temporary setback.
Stella’s later reflections suggested the signs had actually been building for some time, visible to family in ways the public smile made easy to miss.
That concern crystallized publicly not long after, when Dolly’s younger sister Frieda posted a simple request on Facebook asking fans to pray for Dolly.
What looked at first like an ordinary, well-meaning gesture spread rapidly, sparking widespread speculation about how serious Dolly’s condition actually was.
Dolly herself responded directly within days, appearing in a video from a Grand Ole Opry commercial shoot, insisting with her familiar humor that she wasn’t finished yet — the now widely remembered “I ain’t dead yet” moment that briefly quieted public concern.
In the months that followed, the pattern repeated: reassuring updates about kidney stones, dehydration, and treatment, paired with continued work on new projects, right up until Dolly Parton’s death on August 25, 2026, at 80.
Looking back across that full timeline — the postponed residency, the family’s public worry, Stella’s own account of a sister who consistently deprioritized her own wellbeing — it becomes easier to see what the people closest to Dolly understood well before the rest of the world did: that the warmth and resilience the public saw every time she appeared on camera came at a real, largely invisible cost.
