Nicholas Bice, 21, victim in Canandaigua apartment homicide, was son of accused murderer

Nicholas R. Bice of Canandaigua, the son of a man once accused of murder, is now a homicide victim himself.

Police identified Bice, 21, as the person whose body was found inside a burning apartment in a Canandaigua complex Saturday morning.

Bice was a resident of the Camelot Square apartment in which his body was discovered after firefighters extinguished a small fire there. Authorities believe the fire was purposefully set.

Bice's death had been ruled a homicide. No arrests have been made and the case remains under investigation, police said Tuesday.

Nicholas Bice's father, Rodney Bice, was arrested in 2013 on a charge that he had killed his girlfriend in Florida 15 years earlier.

They lived in a home on Phoenix Street in Canandaigua at the time. Authorities verified Tuesday that the two were father and son.

The body of Rodney Bice's girlfriend, 31-year-old Jackie Sheehan, had been found in a wooded area in suburban Orlando in April 1998. She was last seen leaving the apartment she shared with Bice after the two of them had argued, according to the Seminole County, Florida, sheriff’s office.

Rodney Bice, who reportedly left town shortly after Sheehan's death, was a person of interest in the case but was never charged until police reopened the investigation in 2013. A witness then came forward who claimed Bice had admitted to threatening to kill Sheehan.

He was taken into custody in Canandaigua in September 2013 on a charge of second-degree murder. But before his trial could begin, the witness backed out and refused to testify. Prosecutors said they had no choice but to let Bice plead guilty to a lesser offense, aggravated battery.

Bice served 2½ years in a Florida prison and was released in April 2016. Corrections department records, which list identifying characteristics of inmates, say Rodney Bice had the words “Nick Bice” tattooed on his back.

Police asked that anyone with information about Nicholas Bice or the circumstances of his death call detectives at (585) 396-5035.

SORR@Gannett.com

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