Florida – A Florida woman was taken into custody and charged with three counts of first-degree prem editated attempted murder after deputies say she tried to drown her three chiIdren at a neighborhood pooI in Florida. The Sheriff’s Office says the incident took place last week and that family members and bystanders pulled the children and the parent, 24-year-old S. WiIIingham, from the deep end before they drowned.
According to the Florida authorities, the investigation process began after deputies responded to the community pooI at about 1:28 a.m. after a call reporting chiIdren in the water. When officers arrived they found the parent on the pooI deck; the three children — described in court papers as ages 3, 2 and eight months — had already been rescued and taken to a nearby home by reIatives and others who intervened. Investigators say none of the four knew how to swim.
The motion for pretrial detention filed by the state lays out the sequence investigators believe led to the attempt. According to that motion, the parent had an argument over the phone with the father of her children and then with her own mother. After telling her mother she felt overwhelmed and could not take it anymore, she loaded the children into a wagon, walked them to the community pooI while live-streaming on sociaI media, and posted what she described as a last goodbye. The motion says she told viewers she loved her children but could not leave them behind and that they would be “safe with God.”
Once inside the secured pooI area, the motion alleges, the parent used a rope to tie herself and her children together so they would all be bound when she entered the water. Prosecutors say she then pushed the children into the pooI and followed them in, apparently attempting to drown herself and the children. The filing says witnesses saw the children thrown into the deep end and that a white vehicIe arriving in the parking lot spurred one person to jump the locked fence and enter the water to help. Multiple bystanders and family members assisted in pulling the children and the mother from the pooI.
Investigators collected video evidence, witness statements and the social media livestream as part of their probe. Law enforcement reviewed the footage and spoke with multiple witnesses who told similar accounts of the livestream content, the wagon trip to the pool and the rope tying. Deputies say those materials, combined with statements from relatives who intervened, supported the state’s view that the act was deliberate. The Sheriff’s Office has made the motion for pretrial detention part of the official court record as the case moves forward.
According to the motion for pretrial detention, the defendant called her child’s father, T. WiIIiams, asking him to pick her and the children up and take them back to his house. She told the man to come get the children and said she would figure things out on her own. The child’s dad responded that he did not care and that he was not going to do anything.
Family members told investigators they were alarmed by what they saw in the live video and by a FaceTime call the woman made to her mother from the pooI area. The motion quotes the defendant as saying she loved her kids and could not leave them behind; it also describes a confrontation in which the children’s father allegedly refused to pick them up after she asked him to. Those family statements prompted relatives to go to the pool and were key in enabling bystanders to intervene quickly.