#Socialites, get into this: Dimone Fleming, now 26, was found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect in the 2022 deaths of her two young sons, 3-year-old Daishawn and 11-month-old Octavius. A judge ruled Monday that Fleming was in the grip of postpartum psychosis when the unthinkable happened.
Back in November 2022, the boys were found with multiple stab wounds inside a family shelter in the Mount Hope section of the Bronx, submerged in a bathtub.
Court records show Fleming had been hospitalized for two weeks at a Queens hospital before the killings, where she was diagnosed with major depressive disorder and prescribed psychiatric medication. The problem? She reportedly wasn’t taking it as prescribed, and was instead smoking marijuana daily, a combination doctors say can make postpartum psychosis symptoms spiral fast. Family members told reporters at the time that something had shifted in her.
Her great-aunt, Casey Canada, who helped care for both boys, told Fox News that Fleming had become fixated on the idea that something was wrong with her children. “She thought the kids were devils. She said she was afraid of them,” Canada said, adding that despite everything, “she just snapped.”
Fleming’s father, Dwane Fleming, painted a picture of a young mother who knew she needed help and was trying to get it, not someone anybody saw as a danger. “Dimone was going through some stuff,” he told the Daily News back in 2022. “Dimone wanted to get treatment for herself.”
This news comes at the same time jurors up in Massachusetts are deliberating in the Lindsay Clancy trial, where the former labor and delivery nurse is accused of killing her three children in 2023 and is also mounting a defense built around postpartum psychosis. Two mothers, two tragedies, one condition that experts say still doesn’t get taken seriously enough until it’s too late.
Now, Fleming isn’t walking free. A not-guilty finding by reason of mental disease or defect means she stays in custody at a psychiatric facility while doctors and the court determine whether she’s still a danger to herself or others.
A new evaluation has been ordered, and she’s due back in court on September 18.
If you or someone you know is struggling after childbirth, feeling disconnected, overwhelmed, paranoid, or like something just isn’t right, please reach out to a doctor or call the Postpartum Support International Helpline at 1-800-944-4773. You don’t have to carry it alone.