Dimone Fleming, 26, was suffering from postpartum psychosis when she stabbed her two children, 3-year-old Daishawn Fleming and 11-month-old Octavius Canada, at a Bronx family shelter, the New York Times reported. A US mom was found not criminally responsible due to mental disease or defect by a judge in The Bronx for the 2022 murders of her two sons.
Fleming is not being released from custody yet. This comes as jurors are in the middle of deliberating a similar fate for Lindsay Clancy . Later, Fleming’s then-boyfriend Columbus Canada, Octavius’ father, found the two children unresponsive in the apartment. He then called the police.
The Massachusetts mother is facing three counts of murder in the killings of her children Cora, 5; Dawson, 3; and Callan, 8 months. A shelter employee called 911 to report that water and smoke were coming from Fleming’s apartment on the night of November 26, 2022. She will be re-evaluated by court-appointed psychiatrists, and is scheduled to return to court on September 18.
Police found Fleming “acting irrationally,” and she was then taken to the hospital for evaluation. Initially, police did not find the murdered children buried under a pile of clothes in the bathtub since a neighbor told them the kids were with their father. Jurors said in court this week that trying Fleming for double murder would not serve justice.
“Ms. Fleming believed her actions were necessary to protect or ‘cleanse’ her children,” stated a forensic psychiatrist report written by doctors hired by the defense. However, she did not take her medication as prescribed and instead used marijuana daily, which made her mental health symptoms even worse.
There, she was diagnosed with major depressive disorder and prescribed psychotropic medication, according to court records, per the New York Times.
Fleming had been treated at a Queens hospital for two months before the murders.
