'Face shoved into a couch': Mother dosed 2-year-old daughter with 'handful' of melatonin gummies and 'smothered' her so she could text with her boyfriend
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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 has been handed a lengthy prison sentence for the tragic suffocation of her 2-year-old daughter, a consequence of the child’s refusal to nap.

Paige Bohne, aged 22, received a sentence ranging from 18 to 45 years for first-degree child abuse, alongside an additional 4 to 10 years for assault with intent to cause bodily harm, as reported by local media including Wilcox Newspapers. These sentences will be served concurrently, and Bohne has already been credited with 406 days for time served.

In a plea agreement reached in July, Bohne chose to plead no contest to the charges of child abuse and assault. As part of this agreement, charges of murder and conspiracy to commit child abuse were dropped.

The tragic incident occurred on November 7, 2024, when Bohne dialed 911 to report her daughter, Octavia Bohne, was unresponsive at their residence in Memory Lane Mobile Home Park in Sturgis, Michigan. Responding authorities declared the child deceased, with an autopsy later confirming suffocation as the cause of death.

According to reports by regional newspapers, Bohne confessed to law enforcement that her daughter died because she wouldn’t nap. She admitted to pushing the toddler into a couch and holding her down until she ceased struggling. St. Joseph County Prosecutor Deborah Davis highlighted the disturbing nature of Bohne’s actions, describing them as “unconscionable.”

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.

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