Police have arrested a man who admitted to strangling a mother and her 8-year-old daughter and making it look like a murder-suicide. Shakeema Elliott and daughter Kaliya Williams were found dead in a bathtub surrounded by pills in their Brooklyn home on Sunday, but an autopsy revealed that they had both been strangled. Elliott's ex-boyfriend and the building's janitor, Amahal Lynch, admitted to killing both after sodomizing the little girl, and was charged with two counts of second-degree murder.
Lynch told police in a confession that he had strangled Elliott after the two got in an argument, and then killed her daughter. He later stripped them of their clothes, put them in the tub and scattered pills around in an attempt to make it look like a murder-suicide. Elliott's cousin, Madeline Motley, told the Daily News, "I just don't understand, why kill both? If you want to hurt Shakeema, why do the little girl, too? She was a baby."
Police found the bodies after a neighbor noticed Elliott's door was ajar and called the police, thinking there had been a burglary. Neighbors have created a memorial outside the Nostrand Houses, mourning the victims. Elliott's aunt told WABC, "What he did was ruin too many families, his included. I have no sympathy for him."
