A Florida mother is facing serious charges after allegedly trying to drown herself and her three young children by tying them together and pushing them into the deep end of a community swimming pool, prosecutors say.
According to court filings, 24‑year‑old Shaniece Willingham reportedly livestreamed what she described as her “last goodbye” on Instagram early Wednesday morning before heading to a pool on Sacramento Street in Valrico with her children — ages 3, 2, and 8 months.
“The defendant loaded her children in a wagon and walked them to the community pool while posting a live story on her Instagram page,” court documents state. In the video, she allegedly told viewers she loved her kids but could not “leave them behind” and believed “they would be safe with God.”
Relatives who saw the stream rushed to the pool, and Hillsborough County sheriff’s deputies were called around 1:30 a.m. By the time they arrived, family members had pulled Willingham and her children from the water alive, according to a motion for pretrial detention.
Prosecutors allege the incident followed an argument with Willingham’s mother and frustration over the children’s father refusing to pick them up. Before entering the water, she reportedly FaceTimed her mother to say she loved her, then turned the camera to show she was at the pool.
The court motion claims Willingham used a rope from a lifesaving flotation device to bind herself and the children together so they “could all be bound together after entering the pool.” None of them knew how to swim, and the deep end was marked as six feet deep.
Afterward, Willingham allegedly told investigators she wanted “to end her life and kill her children at the same time.”
She has been charged with multiple counts, including attempted murder, and was ordered held without bond ahead of a pretrial detention hearing set for Sept. 29.
“This incident is nothing short of horrific,” Sheriff Chad Chronister said in a statement Thursday. “The fear and betrayal these innocent children must have felt, at the hands of the one person meant to love, care for, and protect them, is unimaginable. This decision was not a cry for help; it was a deliberate act of cruelty. There is no excuse, no justification. These children were failed by their own mother, and it is only by the quick actions of their family that they are alive today.”
