GREEN COVE SPRINGS, fla. — Minutes after a man pleaded guilty to kidnapping, raping and murdering 7-year-old Somer Thompson, who was dumped in a trash bin and later found in a landfill, the little girl’s twin brother addressed his sister’s killer.
“You know you did this, and now you’re going to jail,” 9-year-old Samuel Thompson said to Jarred Harrell from the witness stand.
In a deal sparing Harrell the death penalty, the 26-year-old was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. Somer’s family supports the deal because Harrell agreed not to appeal his convictions.
“Your punishment does absolutely not fit your crime,” said Somer’s mother, Diena Thompson. “Remember now, there is no safe place for you. You do not have an impenetrable cell. There will be no peace in the afterlife.”
Somer was a second-grader in Orange Park, Fla. — a suburb south of Jacksonville — when she disappeared while walking home from school Oct. 19, 2009. She was with her sister and some friends but ran ahead of them after they had a spat.
It was a route she had taken many times before, and she often stopped at a home to pet a white dog. Usually, no one came outside. On the day Somer disappeared, authorities said, Harrell lured her into the home where he was living with his mother.
Two days later, her body was discovered in a landfill in southern Georgia.
Harrell wasn’t arrested until about three months after Somer’s death. Initially, authorities interviewed convicted sex offenders within a 5-mile radius of Somer’s home.
On a hunch, they tailed nine garbage trucks from Somer’s neighborhood to the landfill and picked through the trash as each rig spilled its load. They sorted through more than 225 tons of garbage before they spotted her legs sticking out of the garbage.
Harrell lived with his parents on a neighborhood street Somer took to get home. Police said Somer was lured into the home and later asphyxiated and tossed into a trash bin.
Harrell pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, kidnapping, sexual battery, possession of child pornography and other sex charges, some stemming from an unrelated molestation case involving a 3-year-old relative. Authorities did not release details of that new case.
The discovery of Somer’s body touched off an outpouring of support for the Thompson family; days of vigils and fundraisers were held so Somer’s mom could financially afford to stay home with her other children. A mountain of stuffed animals, balloons and notes to the family sprung up near a tree across from the little girl’s home.
