Bradenton mother gets prison sentence after ‘implausible’ child death explanation

A Bradenton woman is going to prison, about 14 years after her 4-year-old daughter was found dead in her closet.

Judge Stephen Matthew Whyte sentenced Dominique Marie Brewer, 43, to 20 years in prison on Wednesday at the Manatee County Judicial Center in downtown Bradenton. Brewer received the maximum possible penalty after negotiating a no-contest plea to manslaughter and aggravated manslaughter of a child charges in October 2023.

Before Brewer pleaded to the lesser manslaughter charges, she was initially charged with the second-degree murder of her daughter and was set to go to trial the week a deal was reached between the defense and the State.

Brewer’s defense attorney, Jennifer Joynt-Sanchez, said that while Brewer maintains her innocence, the plea was entered on the basis that if Brewer were convicted during the trial, she would likely spend the rest of her life in prison.

Brewer, who has been in prison since 2019, will get credit for time served.

The sentencing comes more than a decade after 4-year-old Kelis Shontay Rucker was found lifeless in the closet of Brewer’s home on Aug. 14, 2009. By the time the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office arrived, Kelis was already cold to the touch, her jaw was stiff and hospital workers later found marks on her neck suggesting she may have been strangled, the Bradenton Herald previously reported.

What role did Bradenton mother play in daughter’s death?

Brewer gave detectives conflicting explanations about what happened, said April Culbreath, the lead detective on the case during the initial investigation.

She first told Culbreath her daughter must have ingested a penny. Then Culbreath said Brewer suggested that Kelis hung herself with a scarf.

Brewer settled and stuck with the scarf to explanation, Culbreath said, shifting from “she must have hung herself with the scarf” to “I found her hanging.” In 2009, Brewer told detectives that Kelis was pretending to be a ballerina and was playing with a pink and purple scarf “that she loved to wear,” a child welfare report said.

But deputies were skeptical.

Culbreath told the court Wednesday that Brewer was “clearly trying to make herself look hysterical” with “bad acting” and showed “several indicators of lying.”

Five different stories, detective says

Of the five different explanations Brewer gave, Culbreath said the one consistency was that she was the only one home with the child at the time of the death.

The Manatee County Medical Examiner was also unconvinced by Brewer’s explanation, the Bradenton Herald previously reported. The medical examiner told investigators the autopsy findings suggested, “it was likely the mother played a more active role in the child’s death.” The autopsy concluded that the child died of asphyxia and neck compression, and also had sustained “blunt impact” to her head.

But Associate Medical Examiner Suzanne R. Utley left undetermined whether Kelis died as a result of homicide, suicide or an accident, records show.

Brewer’s defense lawyers and state prosecutors debated during Wednesday’s hearing whether Kelis was a victim of strangulation and whether the signs of neck compression were ligature marks.

In 2019, O’Donnell said that the medical examiner and a medical expert would testify that Kelis was strangled to death if the case went to trial, the Bradenton Herald previously reported.

Brewer testified her innocence during Wednesday’s sentencing, asking the court to “acknowledge” her “suffering.”

“There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of her. She was an angel,” Brewer said.

Brewer added that she should have kept a better eye on her that night but denied any intentional wrongdoing.

“My only fault was falling asleep. I did not play a part in my daughter’s death physically. But I am responsible in part, whether morally or legally, I can’t say,” Brewer said. “I wasn’t the best mother, but I didn’t harm my daughter.”

But Judge Whyte, much like the detectives and the medical examiner’s office before him, remained skeptical.

Prosecutors played a video in court Wednesday of Brewer re-enacting her version of events with detectives shortly after Kelis’ body was discovered. In the video, she showed law enforcement how she found her daughter hanging by the scarf in the closet.

Bradenton woman gets 20-year prison sentence

Whyte, just before sentencing Brewer to 20 years, said he was “having trouble reconciling how a child could tie a knot strong enough to sufficiently hold her weight until she asphyxiated” but then that knot could come undone so easily when Brewer allegedly flung it across the room after finding her.

“I find your version of events implausible,” Whyte told Brewer at Wednesday’s hearing.

Culbreath, who broke down in tears as she asked Whyte to give her the maximum possible sentence, said after 27 years in law enforcement in Manatee County, the Brewer case sticks with her.

“My friends and family know this case has haunted my soul for 15 years,” she said.

Brewer was a longtime suspect in the death of her daughter but wouldn’t face charges until she was arrested 10 years later in June 2019.

Culbreath said she wasn’t sure what led to the pause with the case file, but the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office said it began re-examining “all aspects of the case” in 2017 and held “numerous meetings” with prosecutors who initially declined to press charges against Brewer.

A new witness, who was a friend and neighbor of Brewer’s at the time of Kelis’ death, may have played a role in the State building a case in 2019 when charges came, the Bradenton Herald previously reported.

Questions remain in child’s death

But many questions that would have been explored during the trial remain.

“We’ll never know what actually happened,” Culbreath said.

But for some, that’s not enough. Kelis’ father, Renaldo Rucker, became emotional during Wednesday’s hearing as he pleaded for answers.

He told the court he forgave Brewer and even visited her in jail seeking those answers.

“I asked her to tell me what happened. Just tell me what happened,” Rucker said. “I still don’t know what happened.”

“I miss my child more than anything in this world,” he said.