Daneicha Bringht looks at a photo of her son, 5-year-old Kaamir Bringht, being held by Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Anna Faraglia. Daneicha Bringht was sentenced to life in prison with no chance at parole for 35 years after she pleaded guilty to aggravated murder for shooting Kaamir at a hotel in April 2021.
Tribune News Service
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Daneicha Bringht took her 5-year-old son, Kaamir, to a Brooklyn hotel in April 2021 so he could swim in the indoor pool.
The mother treated her boy to a joyous time. She showered him with sweets.
“Then she decided to kill him,” Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Anna Faraglia said in court Monday.
That night, in the Fairfield Inn and Suites Hotel on Tiedeman Road, Bringht used a .22-caliber pistol to shoot the child 11 times. She shot him six times in the head.
Bringht, now 31, and her parents cried in the courtroom on Monday as Faraglia described the boy’s injuries to the judge who sentenced Bringht to spend the rest of her life in prison.
Bringht pleaded guilty to aggravated murder and other charges as part of a deal that saw prosecutors drop charges that could have made her eligible for the death penalty if a jury convicted her.
In exchange, she agreed to spend 35 years behind bars before she is able to ask the state parole board to let her out.
Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Hollie Gallagher accepted the plea and imposed the agreed upon sentence.
Bringht spoke barely above a whisper when she had her chance to speak before heading to prison.
“I just want to apologize for everything that happened,” she said, hanging her head.
The shooting happened on April 24, 2021. Bringht, who had been investigated by the Cuyahoga County Department of Children and Family Services, called police after the shooting. She told dispatchers that an unknown man had entered her hotel room and shot her and her son about 30 minutes earlier.
As police investigated, Bringht eventually admitted to making the story up, and she was arrested.
Prosecutors, defense attorneys and Bringht’s mother acknowledged that Bringht has a history of mental illness, including a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
But court-ordered mental health evaluations found her illnesses did not rise to the level of her being incompetent to stand trial or qualify her to seek a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.
“I certainly understand and appreciate mental illness,” Faraglia said. “But the fact of the matter is that a 5-year-old boy didn’t have to die that day, and he did. For that, she will have to pay the price.”
Faraglia also placed a copy of Kaamir’s autopsy report and his photographs in Bringht’s case file to ensure that the evidence “follows her to the institution.”
Bringht’s mother, Jennifer Andrews, sobbed as she said that her family is devastated to lose not just a beloved grandson, but Andrews’ only daughter.
“I will always be there to support you as long as God keeps me alive and you alive,” Andrews said to her daughter. “You need to forgive yourself.”
She said Bringht was suicidal and had told family members that she had thoughts of harming herself and Kaamir. But the family struggled amid the coronavirus epidemic to get her the help she needed.
Defense attorney Rufus Sims said that Bringht’s entire family is in pain.
“Wish we could take it back,” Sims said. “That just cannot happen.”
Bringht’s father, Donald Bringht, filed a lawsuit against the county’s child and family services agency, accusing it of failing to adequately investigate the family’s complaints about Kaamir’s safety in Bringht’s custody.
A county spokeswoman said that the agency opened a case on April 1, 2021, about whether the boy’s basic needs were met, but it did not receive allegations of any physical abuse.
The lawsuit was dismissed in August because a judge found Donald Bringht’s attorney filed the lawsuit a day late.
