Two little boys are dead. Their mother will not receive a prison sentence for killing them after a Bronx judge found her not criminally responsible because of mental disease or defect.

Dimone Fleming, now 26, killed 3-year-old Daishawn Fleming and 11-month-old Octavius Canada inside a Bronx family shelter in November 2022. The boys were stabbed repeatedly and found lifeless in a bathtub full of water.

ABC7’s current report lays out the ruling, the diagnosis, and the decision to keep Fleming in custody while doctors evaluate whether she remains dangerous.

ABC7 New York reports that a judge found Fleming not guilty by reason of insanity after mental-health experts retained by both the prosecution and defense concluded that she was psychotic when she killed the children.

Police had described Fleming as acting erratically when officers encountered her on the night of the killings. She was originally charged with first-degree murder, but the court has now ruled that she was not responsible due to mental disease or defect.

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Fleming is not being released. She remains in custody while another evaluation determines whether she continues to pose a danger to other people, and she is expected back in court on September 18.

The diagnosis does not change what Daishawn and Octavius endured. It changes the legal consequence for the person who killed them.

The Bronx District Attorney’s Office said in its 2024 indictment announcement that both boys suffered extensive stabbing and slicing wounds to their necks and surrounding areas. The medical examiner determined that each child had four fatal wounds.

Prosecutors said the boys were found in a bathtub full of water beneath a dark sheet. Fleming was the only caretaker inside the shelter apartment when they were killed.

The indictment charged her with first-degree murder, four counts of second-degree murder, and two counts of first-degree manslaughter. Those charges will not produce a prison sentence after the insanity finding.

Fleming was arraigned before Bronx Supreme Court Justice Brenda Rivera and remanded at the time. The case was prosecuted through the Bronx District Attorney’s Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Bureau before doctors for both sides agreed on her mental condition.

The newly published report that prompted this article puts the legal outcome in blunt terms: Fleming will not serve a prison sentence for the deaths of Daishawn and Octavius.

The case began with two separate 911 calls on November 26, 2022. Officers first responded to a report of an emotionally disturbed woman at the Echo Place shelter and sent Fleming to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation.

A second call came roughly half an hour later. Officers returned and found Daishawn and Octavius unresponsive with multiple stab wounds, and both boys were pronounced dead at the hospital.

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Fleming’s legal team argued that postpartum psychosis left her hallucinating and detached from reality. Prosecutors’ own evaluator ultimately reached the same core conclusion, eliminating the expert dispute that might otherwise have been fought before a jury.

The timing has also drawn an unavoidable comparison to the Lindsay Clancy trial in Massachusetts, where jurors are weighing a postpartum-psychosis defense in the deaths of three children.

Postpartum psychosis is a severe psychiatric emergency, and the court’s ruling means Fleming can be confined for treatment if doctors find that she remains dangerous. Court-ordered psychiatric confinement is legally distinct from a prison sentence for the deaths of two children.

Daishawn was three. Octavius was eleven months old.

Their names and the violence inflicted on them should remain at the center of this story, even as the legal system shifts its attention to their mother’s diagnosis and future treatment.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

 

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