Valrico mother Shaniece Willingham, 24, is set to stand before a Hillsborough County judge today for a pretrial hearing in a case that alleges she tried to drown her three young children at a Valrico community pool last September. Prosecutors say family members who saw a social-media livestream rushed to the scene and pulled the children from the water. At the hearing, the judge will decide whether Willingham remains jailed without bond and set the next steps in the criminal case.
Pretrial hearing set for Tuesday, May 19
According to WTSP, Willingham is due in court today, for a pretrial proceeding in Hillsborough County. An amended motion for pretrial detention that lays out prosecutors’ timeline and evidence is publicly available via the court filing on DocumentCloud.
Prosecutors’ account
As outlined by Law&Crime, prosecutors allege Willingham loaded her three children into a wagon after a fight, livestreamed a “last goodbye” on Instagram, used rope from a life ring to bind herself to the children and pushed them into the pool’s six-foot deep end. FOX 13 Tampa Bay reported witnesses and family members jumped the pool fence and pulled the two toddlers and the 8-month-old to safety, and quoted Hillsborough Sheriff Chad Chronister calling the episode “nothing short of horrific.”
Charges and mental-health context
Court filings show Willingham faces three counts of attempted first-degree premeditated murder and was ordered held without bond, per the prosecution motion on DocumentCloud. The motion and reporting also note prior interventions: “Willingham has been Baker acted four times,” the motion said, according to Law&Crime. We first covered the arrest in September in a Hoodline story titled Valrico Mom Charged…