In emotional testimony, mother says she saw man shoot her 8-year-old daughter 'execution style'
It was snowing on Jan. 12, and two little girls begged their mother to go outside and play.
So Darnykka Daniel McCray bundled her daughters in their new winter coats. Eight-year-old Sammarre Daniel wore a black coat, and her younger sister Samaii Daniel, 5, wore pink.
Video footage from outside their home on Jenkins Court in North Nashville showed the girls, so inseparable that family members nicknamed them "Bread and Butter," playing happily in the snow that afternoon.
But the idyllic scene was soon shattered by gunfire — and an unthinkable tragedy.
Speaking in court Wednesday, McCray said her stepson Queshan Brooks had stopped by for a visit that day. While the girls were outside, he pulled a pistol on McCray and clenched his jaw, she said.
He shot twice, she said, hitting her in the face and the hand. Then, without a word, he headed for the door.
"I screamed for my babies," she said in court. "I was telling them to run."
As blood began to pour down her face, McCray said, she heard gunshots and a child's cries from the front yard.
By the time she made it outside, little Samaii was already lying lifeless on the ground. Then, McCray said, she watched as Brooks aimed a gun at Sammarre's head and pulled the trigger.
"He was standing over top of my baby execution style," she said.
"I heard another shot — pow — and there wasn't no more screaming."
Both girls were dead when police arrived. The gunman was on the run.
By the time police arrested Brooks, 25, later that day, investigators said he also had killed 70-year-old Robert Payne and wounded Patrick Hancock during a carjacking nearby in North Nashville.
He was charged with three counts of homicide and two counts of attempted homicide. McCray and Hancock identified Brooks as the shooter Wednesday during a preliminary hearing in the case.
About a dozen family members of Payne and the two little girls watched as McCray, Hancock and a police investigator discussed the shootings in detail. Brooks sat stoically in the courtroom in a yellow jail jumpsuit with chains wrapped around his waist.
At one point, while Hancock described Brooks shooting Payne in the back of the head, McCray ran out of the courtroom in tears.
After hearing the testimony of four witnesses and reviewing footage from surveillance cameras, General Sessions Judge Gale Robinson found there was probable cause to move forward with the case. He sent it to the grand jury, moving it one step closer to a trial in criminal court.
Investigators have not identified a motive in the shootings. During the hearing, Brooks' defense attorney Shaw Cunningham asked McCray and other witnesses if they thought Brooks was acting strangely or if he was under the influence of drugs or alcohol during the shootings.
Sharon Battle, the girls' grandmother, sat in court for hours Wednesday morning waiting for the hearing. Afterward, her grief was palpable and tears ran down her cheeks.
She wore a button with pictures of her grandchildren in court.
The girls often stayed with her, Battle said. She remembered them piling into bed together. Now, she said, she sleeps with their pictures by her side.
"It just feels like something was ripped out of me," Battle said. "It's like my whole life is gone because my babies aren't there."
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