Man, 76, who kidnapped five-year-old girl and fed her to ALLIGATORS faces death penalty

A Florida man who kidnapped a young girl and fed her to alligators before she died now faces the death penalty.

Harrel Braddy, 76, kidnapped Quatisha Maycock, five, and her mother Shandelle in November 1998.

He attacked Shandelle, beat and choked her, locked her in the trunk of his car and then abandoned her body along a remote stretch near Palm Beach.

Braddy then left her daughter Quatisha alive near a section of the Everglades ominously known as Alligator Alley, apparently afraid that she would identify him.

The child was discovered dead two days later in a canal, allegedly after being attacked by alligators.

Braddy had already been convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in 2007 after a jury trial.

However, he is now back in court after changes to Florida’s death penalty laws reopened his sentencing – raising the possibility that he could still avoid execution.

Braddy was found to have kidnapped the pair after he befriended the mother at church on November 7, 1998.

Prosecutors said that he targeted Shandelle after she had repeatedly rejected his romantic advances.

According to investigators, Braddy attacked Quatisha. Shandelle survived the attack, but Quatisha did not.

Braddy told detectives that he had left the child near a section of Interstate 75 in Broward County, best known as Alligator Alley.

He claimed to have left Quatisha alive on the side of the road at a bridge crossing over a canal.

Braddy explained that he had done this because he was worried that Quatisha would tell people what he had done to her mother. 

He also admitted that he ‘knew’ Quatisha ‘would probably die’, according to court filings.

Quatisha’s body was discovered two days later in a canal by two fishermen.

An autopsy determined that her left arm, which was missing when her body was found, had been bitten off by an alligator postmortem.

The court also heard that Quatisha had suffered alligator bites to her chest and head while still alive, although she was likely unconscious.

The young girl’s body had injuries to her lips, consistent with fish feeding on her corpse, as well as other gator bites.

Quatisha also sustained ‘brush burns’ while she was alive, which would be consistent with falling out of a car and sliding on the road.

It was concluded that she died due to blunt force trauma to the left side of her head.

In his sentencing order, then-Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Leonard E. Glick described the killing as adults having betrayed their most basic responsibilities.

‘Adults are supposed to protect children from monsters,’ Glick said. ‘They are not supposed to be the monsters themselves.’

Braddy is now back in court after changes to Florida’s death penalty laws reopened his sentencing.

Jury selection began Monday in Miami-Dade Circuit Court, according to the Miami Herald.

In 2016, the state’s death-penalty process was disrupted after the US Supreme Court ruled that Florida’s sentencing system violated the Sixth Amendment right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury.

That was because it allowed judges, rather than juries, to decide whether a defendant should be sentenced to death.

In response, state lawmakers enacted a rewritten statute allowing death sentences to go through as long as it was recommended by 10 out of 12 jurors. 

However, the Florida Supreme Court struck down the revision, saying that juries must be unanimous before a death sentence can actually be imposed.

In turn, that ruling opened the door for Braddy to return to court for a resentencing.