In the early hours of December 4, 2008, utility workers discovered the body of a newborn infant wrapped in a tote bag and placed inside a box in a wooded area along South Carolina Highway 544, on the outskirts of Conway in Horry County. A coroner's examination determined the child had died of hypothermia from exposure to the elements, but had been viable at the time of death. With no identity established, the child became known publicly as "Baby Boy Horry," and the case went cold after investigative leads were exhausted.
The case remained unsolved for more than eleven years until March 3, 2020, when the Horry County Police Department announced new developments based on information supplied by the child's father, Ronald Woodham III. Physical evidence confirmed Jennifer Lynn Sahr (formerly Rickel), then 32 and a former Coastal Carolina University student living in Pensacola, Florida, as the child's mother. Sahr was arrested in North Myrtle Beach and booked into the J. Reuben Long Detention Center in Conway on March 4, 2020, charged with homicide by child abuse, a charge carrying a potential sentence of 20 years to life. She was denied bond on March 6, 2020.
According to an account presented by Sahr's attorney, Morgan Martin, Sahr had a brief relationship with Woodham while both were students at Coastal Carolina University in 2008. She stated she was never told she was pregnant despite a doctor's visit that August for numbness in her hands and feet. In December 2008, while in her room, she began bleeding heavily, gave birth, and passed out; upon waking she said the baby showed no signs of life. She then left the infant in a bag inside a box along Highway 544. Her attorney argued there was no proof the baby was alive when abandoned, a claim contradicted by the autopsy finding of air in the baby's lungs, which supported a conclusion of homicide-induced hypothermia; the defense suggested this could instead be attributable to decomposition.
On September 15, 2022, Sahr pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter as part of a plea agreement, with the homicide-by-child-abuse charge dropped. She faced between two and thirty years in prison, with prosecutors seeking at least 20 years. At sentencing, Sahr addressed the court expressing remorse and asking for forgiveness. On June 15, 2023, it was announced that the child's father had named him Ronald Eugene Woodham IV. On June 16, 2023, a judge sentenced Sahr to four years in prison with credit for two and a half years already served, plus a six-year suspended sentence upon release and a $1,700 restitution payment to the coroner's office, citing Sahr's current children as "the most important factor" in the sentence. Woodham III publicly stated he had sympathy for Sahr but criticized the sentence as too lenient. Sahr was released early from prison under community supervision on September 29, 2023.
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