Woman charged with open murder in daughter's death; Benzie County 5-year-old killed in shooting
Aug. 13—BEULAH — Authorities in Benzie County charged a local woman with open murder after the shooting death of her 5-year-old daughter.
Benzie County Sheriff Kyle Rosa said his deputies and Michigan State Police troopers responded to an emergency call at 2 p.m. Thursday on Bendon Road in Inland Township from a man who reported his girlfriend allegedly shot her child. Authorities charged the woman with open murder the next day.
Rosa said Thursday's 911 caller apparently struggled over the gun and wrestled control of the weapon away from the woman, who then fled the house and went into the nearby woods, officials said.
The man — who was not the child's father — told the emergency dispatcher the child had serious injuries to her head "consistent with a gunshot wound," authorities said.
Judge John Mead of the 85th District Court on Friday arraigned Suzanne Kay Jacobson, 33, on open murder and remanded her without bond back to Benzie County Jail in Beulah.
An open murder count allows jurors in a criminal trial to decide between first- and second-degree murder charges during their deliberations, according to state law.
Authorities said three other children between the ages of 7 and 13 years were also in the Interlochen-area home when Thursday's shooting happened, but were able to get out of the house uninjured.
"Members of the Benzie County Sheriff's Office and the Michigan State Police then began searching for the suspect and located her approximately 20 minutes after arriving on scene at a nearby business sitting in an employee's vehicle," Rosa said Friday in a released statement. "She was taken into custody without incident."
Michigan State Police forensic crime scene investigators searched the home and collected evidence after receiving a search warrant.
Benzie County's Chief Assistant Prosecutor Jennifer Tang-Anderson said Jacobson remains innocent until proven guilty, but authorities uncovered enough evidence in the investigation's first 24 hours to support the open murder charge.
"It's not an accident," she said.
Tang-Anderson said the investigation continues, but authorities have not yet determined why Jacobson shot her daughter.
"This was tough," she said, adding every case in which somebody dies is troubling.
"Of course when it's a child it's heartbreaking," Tang-Anderson said.
This is the second gunshot death of a 5-year-old child in as many weeks in northwest Lower Michigan; a boy was shot and killed Aug. 2 in Kalkaska County, where an investigation also continues but no criminal charges have been filed.
The Kalkaska County boy also was shot in the head, officials reported.
