Background: A section of Memory Lane Mobile Home Park in Sturgis, Michigan, where the defendant and victim lived (WWMT/YouTube). Inset left: Paige Bohne (St. Joseph County Sheriff's Office). Inset right: Octavia Bohne (Dutcher Funeral Home).
A Michigan woman will not see the outside of a prison for a long time for suffocating her 2-year-old daughter by pressing her into a couch because the toddler "wouldn't take a nap."
Paige Bohne, 22, has been sentenced to 18 to 45 years in prison for first-degree child abuse and 4 to 10 years for assault with intent to bodily harm, local outlets, including Wilcox Newspapers, reported. The sentences are set to run concurrently, and she has been credited for 406 days of time served.
The defendant agreed in July to plead no contest to the child abuse and assault charges in exchange for charges of murder and conspiracy to commit child abuse being dismissed.
On Nov. 7, 2024, Bohne called 911 to report that she found her daughter, Octavia Bohne, unresponsive at their home in Memory Lane Mobile Home Park in Sturgis, Michigan. Authorities responded, and the child was pronounced deceased, with an autopsy ruling her cause of death as suffocation.
According to the regional newspaper, Paige Bohne admitted to authorities that her daughter died "because she wouldn't take a nap," saying she pushed the child into her couch and "held her down until she stopped fighting." There were many more troubling details about the defendant's "unconscionable" behavior, St. Joseph County Prosecutor Deborah Davis said.
Paige Bohne did not give her daughter breakfast except for "a handful of melatonin gummies" nearly "three times the amount an adult would have at peak concentration," Davis reportedly said. "Trying to force this child back to sleep so she could text back and forth with her boyfriend, play on TikTok, and make herself something to eat is unconscionable. To not check on this child is such a lapse in judgment that it's difficult to fathom."
But the defendant went much further in her attempt to be left alone. Davis believed Paige Bohne put a blanket over her daughter and "held her down forcefully," causing the child to be "smothered." This, authorities said, is ultimately what caused her death.
"The melatonin wouldn't have killed her, the respiratory issues wouldn't have killed her, but having her face shoved into a couch until she stopped moving, that would do it," Davis said, according to Wilcox Newspapers. "I don't think Paige intended to kill her, that's not what we're looking at. Did she create this situation that is so dangerous? Yes, she did. She knowingly did it, and now she's trying to rationalize it, minimize it, cover it up."
Paige Bohne's father — and Octavia Bohne's grandfather — Charles Bohne, described the child's death and aftermath as "like waking up in a nightmare."
"You just wish you can wake up and not be there," he added, per Kalamazoo, Michigan-based CBS affiliate WWMT. "I just want to know what happened to her. It's all that matters right now."
Octavia Bohne is remembered in her obituary as having been "a happy yet mischievous little girl." She was "vibrant, full of life, cheerful, always smiling and loved to pose in front of a camera," it added.
"Octavia loved to eat, especially cheese puffs, and enjoyed watching Peppa the Pig and Mickey Mouse," the obit goes on. "She loved anything pink, singing and dancing to Baby Shark and butterflies. Octavia was a cuddler and had a special place in her heart for her grandpa. She was loved and cared for so much by her Aunt Alyssa, who was her most favorite person in the world."
Sturgis is located in southern Michigan, about a 2 1/2-hour drive from Detroit.