Mom Who Intentionally Killed 5-Year-Old Daughter by Driving Car into Kansas River Pleads Guilty
A Missouri mom who intentionally drove her car into a river and killed her five-year-old daughter who was a passenger has pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the girl’s death, PEOPLE confirms.
Scharron Renea Dingledine, 26, of Columbia, faces a sentence of life in prison for murdering her daughter Amiyah Bradley last August. When Dingledine drove her vehicle into the Kansas River in Lawrence, Amiyah and the girl’s 1-year-old brother were inside.
Dingledine also pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of her son, which carries a possible penalty of 147 to 165 months in prison when she is sentenced for both crimes on Jan. 22.
The guilty pleas Monday in Douglas County Circuit Court were announced by District Attorney Charles Branson.
Emergency responders who were called to the south bank of the Kansas River about 1:15 p.m. on Aug. 3 rescued both Dingledrine and the boy at the scene. They were told there was a third occupant in the vehicle, but when it the vehicle was recovered from the water, it was empty.
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Clinton Bradley, the girl’s father, wrote on a GoFundMe page seeking help with funeral expenses that his daughter, whose body was recovered the next day, “was tragically killed as a victim of her mother intentionally driving a vehicle into the Kansas River.”
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Dingledine suffered from depression, Bradley told the Lawrence Journal-World. He said that before the incident, he had not seen Amiyah for about a year and a half following a request from Dingledine, who had moved to live with her son’s father in Columbia.
At the time of the incident, and based upon his growing concerns about Dingledine’s mental health, Bradley told the newspaper that he wished he had taken “some kind of action to get custody” of his daughter before she was killed.
