Mom Accused Of Abandoning Daughters Was Set Up, Family Says

The woman accused of abandoning her two young daughters alongside the busy Shore Parkway in Brooklyn was set up by the girls' abusive father, relatives tell WPIX. "What it all boils down to is the money," says Dalisha Adams's aunt Amy. She says Shawn Cobbs, Adams's estranged boyfriend and father of her daughters, is the one who abandoned the girls, as part of a scheme worked out with their grandmother. Adams's brother Peyisai also maintains that his sister handed the girls off to Cobbs. "I don't know if he walked off and left the kids," says Peyisai. "I really can't answer."

Adams's aunt says the girls' grandmother is motivated by greed, and tells WPIX, "If they were to get custody of the children they get $1500 a month per child." She claims Dalisha dropped the girls off with Cobbs's mother so she could go work a second job, in addition to her security guard gig. And Adams's eight-year-old daughter Destiny says she saw her mother take 3-year-old Diani and 2-year-old Dominae into the Bayview Houses, where their paternal grandmother resides.

But the grandmother insists she had no idea the children were being dropped off, and she says she never saw them. “They probably ran back out, and she didn’t even look back,” the grandmother, Bertha Davia, tells the Daily News. After leaving the girls behind, Adams went to her sister's home to rest with Destiny, and spent the afternoon and evening there—until a friend called her to say police were looking for her. And Adams's sister insists that Adams did not upload a photo of a bottle of champagne to Facebook; she says Cobbs has access to the Facebook profile and updated it.

Adams has an order of protection against Cobbs and he's been arrested for domestic violence on multiple occasions, but not convicted. “Dalisha is a victim,” her sister tells the News. Adams's lawyer says his client "vehemently" denies abandoning the girls. She was ordered held on $2,500 bail yesterday, which is half of what prosecutors requested. Her attorney says she'll make bail, but she has been prohibited from seeing her daughters.