Brandi Nicole Elliot (Hendersonville Police Dept.); Piper Elliot and the area alongside Drake’s Creek where Piper was allegedly drowned by her mother (WTVF screenshots)
A 33-year-old mother in Tennessee is accused of killing her 7-year-old daughter, allegedly drowning the child in a creek because she had a “rough day” and “wanted time alone.” Brandi Nicole Elliot was taken into custody over the weekend and charged with first-degree murder in the slaying of young Piper Elliot, authorities announced.
According to a news release from the Hendersonville Police Department, officers on July 13, responded to a report of a child that had drowned in Drakes Creek, near 200 Sanders Ferry Road. The area is about 15 miles northeast of Nashville.
Emergency medical personnel transported Piper to a hospital, but doctors were not able to resuscitate her. She was pronounced dead at about 11:45 p.m., authorities said.
Detectives were called to the scene and interviewed the victim’s mother — identified by authorities as Elliot — regarding the circumstances of her daughter’s drowning. Authorities say that after being transported to the police station and read her Miranda rights, Elliot confessed to forcibly drowning Piper in shocking detail.
Elliot told detectives that “she wanted time alone after having a rough day,” police wrote in a probable cause affidavit. She said she left the apartment where she and her daughter live and sat at the bottom of the stairwell. That’s when Piper came outside to be with her mother.
Elliot allegedly said that Piper refused to leave her alone and would not stay in the apartment by herself. According to Elliot, she then took her daughter across the street where there was a greenway running alongside Drakes Creek, where the two began to walk. That’s when things took a turn for the worse, police said.
“The defendant stated that since the victim would not give her what she wanted, time alone, that she would give the victim what she wanted,” police wrote in the affidavit. “The defendant stated that she held the victim under the water ‘like a large mouth bass’ in a shallow area just off of the greenway until she felt (the victim) ‘bubbling.’ The defendant stated she told the victim to be quiet while she held her under the water.”
After a short while, Elliot said she realized she had done something wrong and pulled her daughter from the water before she began performing CPR, but it was too late.
DeAnna Sartain, a family friend who has worked with Elliot for several years, told Nashville CBS affiliate WTVF that she had no explanation for Elliot’s actions.
“It’s not like the Brandi we knew,” Sartain told the station. “I keep analyzing it and there’s nothing. I just don’t get it.”
Sartain explained that hours before the drowning, Elliot and Piper went to visit Piper’s father in the hospital and nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
Elliot is currently being held in the Sumner County Jail without bond. She is scheduled to appear in court on Friday for a bond hearing.
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