A 20-year-old man is facing capital murder charges this week for killing a loving Sheepshead/Nostrand Houses woman and her eight-year-old daughter.
Investigators alleged that Amahal Lynch strangled 29-year-old Shakeema Elliot during a spat on May 16. In interviews with detectives, he claimed he choked her from behind as the two argued.
After killing the mom, he set upon killing Elliot’s daughter Kaliya Williams, strangling the girl in the same fashion, police alleged.
He then disrobed both victims and posed them in the bathtub as if they were victims of a grisly murder/suicide.
Police said that they were called to Elliot’s fourth-floor apartment on Batchelder Street between Avenues V and W at 4:20 am upon receiving a complaint of a burglary in progress.
When they arrived, they found the door open.
They proceeded inside, only to find Elliott and Williams naked in a partially filled bathtub. There were pills scattered all over the lip of the bathtub and the floor, sources said.
Lynch’s plan may have worked since no signs of trauma were found on the bodies when they were discovered.
But hours later, an autopsy revealed that both had died from “asphyxia due to neck compression” — meaning that they had been strangled to death.
Once this was revealed, cops immediately zeroed in on Lynch, who had dated Elliot previously.
Friends and neighbors were stunned by the news, describing Elliot as a doting mother who would never leave her child out of her sight. They admitted to reporters that she had problems with Lynch, but seemed to be in a better mood lately.
“I just saw her yesterday,” neighbor Tobias Stewart told the New York Post. “She was in high spirits, talking about doing her laundry and that she was going home to cook her daughter something to eat.”
Prosecutors said that this was Lynch’s first arrest in Brooklyn. Grand jury proceedings were pending as we went to press.
