Woman charged with capital murder in blunt force trauma death of Birmingham toddler
Updated May 11, 2021;
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A 34-year-old woman is charged with capital murder in the December blunt force trauma death of her boyfriend’s toddler daughter.
Tykeila Johnson is charged in the killing of 18-month-old Kar’Mynn Brachelle Gaines. The U.S. Marshals Gulf Coast Regional Fugitive Task Force arrested Tykeila Lesha Johnson on Monday, five months to the day after Kar’Mynn died.
Kar’Mynn was injured Nov. 16 and then taken off life support Dec. 10, 2020. The charge is capital because of the victim’s age.
Marshals took Johnson into custody about 2:45 p.m. at an apartment in the 20 block of Sixth Avenue North in Birmingham. She was booked into the Jefferson County Jail at 8:09 p.m. Monday and remains held without bond.
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His mother, Nedra Smith, thinks about her first-born, just 15-years-old, every day and every night.
She thinks about how she was just beginning to know what it felt like to have a full-fledged teenager with his driver’s license just around the corner.
She thinks about him when his five younger siblings want to know why they can’t see him.
She thinks about how much help he was as the man of the family, and how that burden now rests on her 13-year-old.
“I don’t sleep because my mind is constantly racing, trying to put together the who and the why,’ Smith said. “I just don’t get what was so bad, so horrible for you to still have life and my child doesn’t. It’s like one of those movies where you are left hanging. I don’t have an ending.”