MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. – Police are continuing to search for a man they said killed his wife and 10-year-old daughter with a machete over the weekend in Miami Gardens.
Police said Noel Chambers, 57, killed his young daughter, Shayla Chambers, and wife, Lorrice Harris, Saturday night at their apartment in the 600 block of Northwest 177th Street before trying to kill his adult daughter.
"For someone to get a machete and chop somebody up like that -- your own wife, your own daughter, and try to kill your other daughter -- a 10-year-old. This could have been anybody's sister, anybody's daughter. A 10-year-old lying in bed," Harris' older daughter, Ashlee Anderson, said at a news conference Monday.
According to authorities, Saturday was Harris' birthday and was also the day she told her husband she was leaving him.
Police investigated a tip Monday afternoon from someone who claimed to have spotted Noel Chambers going into an abandoned building off Northwest Seventh Avenue, near Top Golf.
Sky 10 was above the area shortly before 5 p.m. as officers swarmed the location, but it doesn't appear that Noel Chambers has yet been found.
Relatives said they believed Noel Chambers was still in Miami Gardens.
"This is not a human. This is a monster, and we need to get this monster off the street," Anderson said.
A crisis response team, meanwhile, was placed at Norwood Elementary School in Miami Gardens Monday morning, where Shayla was a student.
"Wow. That's unthinkable for a parent to do that to their family," Janeka Butler, whose child attends Norwood Elementary School, said.
Parents at the school were shocked to find out about the deadly attack.
Hearing infuriating and devastating reports of the murder of a 10-year-old child during a domestic dispute. This is so wholly unnatural and inexcusable. I pray for this child’s soul and that peace is found after death, that this innocent child did not experience in life. #Enough
— Alberto M. Carvalho (@MiamiSup) March 31, 2019
Police said they found Shayla's body in a bedroom and her mother was found dead on the porch. They said Noel Chambers' adult daughter, Shanalee Chambers, was outside the apartment, alive but injured.
She was taken to a hospital in critical, but stable condition.
Officer Carlos Austin, a spokesman for the Miami Gardens Police Department, said it was the most horrific crime scene that he has seen in his 17 years of law enforcement.
"Hopefully they catch him," Melissa Thomas, whose child attends Norwood Elementary, said. "Sad for the family, the little girl. Because the child is innocent regardless of the circumstances, whatever is going on between the parents and child is always innocent."
A crisis response team was at Shayla's school to help students and staff members process their grief.
"I'm glad that they were quick to respond to that because the students are going to need some kind of outlet to kind of express themselves," Butler said.
Anyone with information about Noel Chambers' whereabouts is asked to contact Detective H. Schneider at 305-474-1710 or Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-TIPS.