Man, 76, avoids death penalty after leaving 5-year-old girl to be eaten by alligators

Warning: this article contains discussions of violence towards women and a child which some readers may find distressing.

A man who kidnapped a mother and daughter has been able to escape the death penalty in Florida, after leaving the five-year-old to be eaten by alligators in the Everglades.

Harrel Braddy was spared by a jury in Miami-Dade for the 1998 murder of little Quatisha Maycock. In November of that year, Braddy drove Quatisha’s mother, Shandelle, home from work and had agreed to collect her daughter from a family friend, reports People.

But when they returned to the home, Shanelle asked Braddy, a church acquaintance, to leave, resulting in him attacking her and threatening to kill her. The married father-of-five is said to have choked her until she blacked out, and did it a second time once she regained consciousness.

From there, he bundled the mother into the trunk of his car and dumped her on a stretch of U.S. 27 near the Broward-Palm Beach County line, and subsequently left her daughter on Alligator Alley.

Harrel Braddy was convicted in 2007 of the 1998 murder of Quatisha Maycock (NBC)

Just days later, The Independent reports fishermen found her body in a canal, still wearing her Polly Pocket pajamas. As for the condition of her body, it was evident that she had been mauled by the alligators, as several bite marks could be seen on her head and stomach, as well as a severed left arm.

Prosecutor Abbe Rifkin said Braddy had kidnapped the pair and murdered her daughter because he was repeatedly rejected, despite Braddy being married to the same woman since the 70s.

The nearly 30-year-old crimes were deliberated for more than three hours by a jury on Friday January 30 2026 before deciding that Braddy would spend the rest of his life in prison, after having already been sentenced to death for the same crimes in 2007 by an 11-1 jury vote.

The original sentence was overturned in 2017 due to a law requiring unanimous verdict. But a 2023 Florida law went on to impose that a jury can implement the death penalty with an 8-4 vote.

Braddy is said to have left Quatisha on Alligator Alley (Getty Stock Images)

Braddy’s criminal history has been colorful, with convictions for robbery, kidnapping, and attempting to kill a corrections officer.

Prior to killing Quatisha, he had escaped custody three times in 1984, after overpowering authorities.

Shanelle wasn’t present for the verdict, per the Miami Herald, but was there throughout the trial, which caused her deep distress.

“The jurors in the resentencing of Harrel Braddy worked hard to find a proper sense of justice for the 1998 murder of 5-year-old Quatisha Maycock,” Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said in a statement. “No one can adequately describe the pain that Quatisha’s mother, Shandelle Maycock, had to go through reliving the details of her daughter’s murder.”