Ga. father shot and killed while trying to return daughter’s backpack

FAYETTE COUNTY, Ga. — A Georgia woman was convicted after a three-day-long trial surrounding the July 2020 murder of her 10-year-old daughter’s father.

According to officials with the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office, on July 31, 2020, Joshua Kellam returned his daughter to Dawn Harmon’s home after a month-long summer visit. The next day, Kellam realized he had left his travel bag containing important legal and personal documents in his daughter’s suitcase and kept her book bag by mistake.

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Kellam began to reach out to Harmon through text messages, and calls and even visited the home alone and accompanied by law enforcement to attempt to retrieve the bag. Harmon did not answer the text, calls or knocks on the door.

Eventually, Kellam went back to Harmon’s home that evening with his daughter’s backpack in one hand and his cell phone in the other. When Kellam locked on the door, Harmon’s husband, Jermaine, exited the home with a .40 caliber Glock pistol and shot him through the heart causing his death.

Days later a detective interviewed Harmon and asked her if there was a file with important documents in the bag Kellam had returned with his daughter, she claimed there were no legal documents in the bag. But, on a recording of a call she made to her father several hours before the shooting, Harmon laughed about Kellam wanting to get his bag back and telling her father it contained a file with important legal documents that belonged to Kellam.

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It was not until the actual trial that Harmon admitted to shredding the file prior to a search warrant being executed at the home.

Officials also claim that Harmon did not tell her daughter the truth, instead, she told her daughter that a law enforcement officer shot her father.

Harmon was found guilty of making false statements and tampering with evidence. She was sentenced to a 15-year sentence with 5 years to be served in prison.

Jermaine was also convicted of felony murder.

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