Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Dad Murdered 2-Year-Old Daughter While FaceTiming Mom

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

Deontray Flanagan will spend the rest of his life in prison for the brutal murder of his daughter, Zevaya, in March 2023. Flanagan led law enforcement on a high speed chase and hit Zevaya in the head and strangled her while on FaceTime call with her mother. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy looks at the disturbing case in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.Host:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest:Bridgette Williams https://www.instagram.com/lawyerbridgette/CRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law & Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. A man strangles his two-year-old daughter while on FaceTime with the little girl's mother. I look at the horrific case out of Texas and the jury's verdict. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. I have to warn you, this case is so incredibly

disturbing. A Houston jury has convicted 26-year-old Deontay Flanagan of capital murder for the death of his young daughter. The child's grandfather told the courtroom how he and his daughter, Kirsten Watson, hopelessly watched Flanagan strangle and beat little two-year-old Zavaya while watching on FaceTime. They both tried reasoning with Flanagan strangle and beat little two-year-old Zavaya while watching on FaceTime. They both tried reasoning with Flanagan over the phone during the police pursuit, but this should have been prevented in the first place. Kirsten warned authorities several times that Flanagan was dangerous and even shared text messages of threats to harm her and her daughter. According to the Harris County Sheriff's Office, deputies were dispatched to the mother's home on two occasions, March 15th for a terroristic threat

and March 19th for telephone harassment. The following day on March 20th is when this fatal incident occurred. Details about the crime were shared by Sheriff Ed Gonzalez during a press conference shortly after the 45-minute pursuit. What we know is that approximately 10, 15 a.m., an adult male went to a private daycare facility, removed his two-year-old daughter. It's our understanding that he's a biological father. We haven't confirmed that. That's the initial information we received. From there, he proceeded to go to a retail store pretty close by where he confronted the mother of the child and began making threats, asking for her phone, her passcode with child in hand and basically threatening to hurt the child if she did not turn those items over. She complied. She made an attempt to try to rescue her daughter from his stronghold, but she was unable to do so. At that point, we're told that the adult male struck her possibly a couple times to the face and continued to flee the location from that retail store, again, still with child in tow and fleeing the location with her phone and his phone

as well. Now, this all unfolded in March of 2023. We cover a lot of really awful things here, and I feel like so many of these cases are unbelievable. And this one just absolutely boggles my mind. We know that Flanagan was upset with his girlfriend because he thought that she was talking to another man after she tried to end things with him. Deputies tried to find him and they wanted to save the little girl and they had good reason to be concerned because Flanagan was going to take his anger out on his precious little girl while fleeing from law enforcement. They were able to immediately or pretty close to to immediately start tracking where the phone might be.

The suspect in the red Camaro was located near the intersection of Greens Road and North Freeway, approximately in the Greens Point area. Other agencies began hearing the radio traffic. And thanks to the quick action, again, of other partners, the Houston Police Department, Texas Department of Public Safety, all ascended into the area to try to assist. A pursuit occurred at that point from that location. It's several miles from here, several minutes from this location. So a pursuit did occur. It's my understanding it took place both along the North Freeway and then here along Stumer Airline as well, as units were, again, trying to devise a strategy to detain the suspect that was in the vehicle with the child. At some point, we believe they were, the mom was able to possibly FaceTime on and off with the suspect,

just trying to get him to stop and just having some brief conversations, trying to resolve the situation. The male wasn't having it. Flanagan continued to flee with little Zevaeh in the car. Eventually, he stopped, and there was a standoff between DeAndre Flanagan and law enforcement. We later learned the child was still in the vehicle as well. One of our negotiators was able to establish verbal communication just briefly from near the vehicle, trying to ascertain the condition, especially of the child. And at that point, during the course of that investigation, working in tandem between HPD SWAT, our units that were here on site with our negotiators as well. They were able to launch a proactive operation using a distraction device with HPD. And then we were able to put an assault team as well to go and extract both the child and the adult male. Eventually, law enforcement was able to get Flanagan and Zavea out of the vehicle

and Zavea was in incredibly bad shape, as you heard the sheriff say. She died at the hospital. Police say Zavea was tossed around the car since she was not in a car seat or buckled in. However, that wasn't what that caused her fatal injuries. She was hit with a blunt object and choked to death, and her mother witnessed part of this. But initially, the sheriff said that Flanagan told them a different story. We, the initial information that we received, again, from the suspect was apparently that the child had, and I'm paraphrasing here, had jumped around the car during everything that had transpired, possibly struck her head and had

bounced around. So I'm assuming probably didn't have a seatbelt or anything and basically said she wasn't being responsive. Flanagan was charged with two counts of assault, criminal mischief, and two counts of evading arrest. Because he committed the offense using a deadly weapon, prosecutors were able to enhance his charges to capital murder. According to court documents, another aggravating factor that led to the enhancement was the fact that the defendant posed a serious risk to public safety by leading police on a 30-mile pursuit. Police say Flanagan admitted to only being worried about himself and not thinking about his daughter. Zavea passed away about five months prior to her third birthday, but her family still celebrated her on that special day. Zavea's mother testified at the trial that she begged Deontre Flanagan not to hurt their daughter,

telling him that the little girl loved him. She had told a local TV station that Zavea's face was covered in blood. She said Deontre told her, you only love that man. You did this to her. Deontre Flanagan thought that she was cheating on him with another man. Flanagan will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole. So to unpack this incredibly disturbing case, I want to bring in Bridget Williams. She is a trial attorney in Texas. Bridget, you know, I just don't know what you do as an attorney when you get a case like this that comes across your desk. You've got a crime that was committed over FaceTime. You've got witnesses, you know, mom who witnessed this. They see it, see what happened. I mean, how do you defend a case like this? This is certainly a tricky one for any defense counsel. Honestly, our job is to give the client as much legal advice as

possible. Sometimes in situations like this, it may be our advice for them to take some type of agreement with the state or even, you know, to move forward with the trial. Whenever we have a case that has been done on video and you have multiple weaknesses, then the defense counsel's role may be to advise the client to take some type of agreement. However, it's ultimately the client's decision on if they want to accept that agreement or move forward with a trial setting. In this situation, the client decided that he wanted to move forward with the trial. Now, I don't know what that advice from defense counsel was, but he decided ultimately that he wanted to move forward with the trial. And so during that trial, it's going to be difficult or it probably, it was difficult for that defense attorney more than

likely to bring any defenses. There aren't any defenses. This was done like you just stated, on camera, intentionally done on camera with an audience and with multiple witnesses. So there's, the defenses are going to be limited if nothing close to none. You know, you know, earlier I read this quote, Deontre apparently said to Zavea's mother, you only love that man. You did this to her. So he was trying to cast blame on Zavaya's mother, Kirsten, saying basically, this is all your fault. He was using their daughter, it seems to me, to hurt her. He wanted to cause her a lifetime of pain and anguish to hurt her. I mean, I've seen this in other cases where the man is trying to punish the woman by using the children and killing the children. I mean, have you ever seen a case like that?

I have seen cases like that. And it's heartbreaking. It's dramatic. It's terrifying that the father or mother, sometimes it's the other way around too, that either parent would sacrifice because that's what happened here. You sacrifice this child's life in order to get back. I'm using quotes around that, get back at the other parent. And it shows anger issues. It shows some type of displacement mentally. It shows so many control matters, egotistical personality. I mean, it just shows so many problems there. But with that being said, it shows that he has some type of imbalance for himself personally. But not only that, he intentionally did this to get back at her.

And that's the intentionality that is needed for that first degree murder charge that he was actually convicted of. Yeah, the capital murder. I mean, he wasn't going to ever face anything but that charge in Texas. You know, the jurors, they watched a video apparently of Zavea's mother. She was basically watching her daughter being murdered. And, you know, she's begging him to not do this, saying she loves you. Don't do this. I mean, how do you even you can't I don't even know how you cross examine a witness like that. You know, I don't know if the defense attorney cross-examined her. I mean, I don't know

what you do. How do you even handle that? Yeah. That's going to be difficult for any defense counsel to cross-examine a mother who just lost their daughter, who witnessed it on video while it was happening. So, I mean, there's the point of cross-examination is to point out any issues that the person may have stated during their direct that they want to bring up questions about. However, in this type of situation, the mother is just telling her story of what she witnessed the father doing on FaceTime. So in real time. So that would be difficult for any defense counsel. And you also, as a defense attorney, you don't want to come off as too harsh on that mother to the jurors. So you're already in a situation where this jury is watching this video. You don't want the defense counsel to come off as harsh to the mother either. So it's a

difficult situation for any defense counsel to be in. Yeah. And this little girl, I mean, she was defenseless. She wasn't even three years old. I just can't even imagine how fearful she was. You know, she's taken out of daycare by her father and then taken on this police chase. She's harmed, you know, law enforcement. What gets me about this case, too, is that, you know, Zavea's mother had called law enforcement and said that he was acting up in the days before this happened. You know, that's, it just seems to me so prevent, it was preventable in some way, shape or form. Well, let's go back to your first point about the daughter being just afraid. I mean, a child in that state. She's vulnerable. She has to be in the care of her father because he picked

her up from school. And for her to get in this vehicle with him, only for him to harm her. I believe the information from Law and Crime stated that he hit her first across the head and then proceeded to strangle her on FaceTime, right? So, I mean, just the fear of that, even in an adult, right? That would be very fearful. But we talked about what that for a child, that has to be unimaginable. Yeah, most definitely. You know, there was some reporting regarding this case, Bridget, that he, you know, was brought into the courtroom one day and shoved, you know, a news camera or something to that effect. And, you know, somebody was slightly injured, somebody had to do with the news camera. I mean, it's the guy obviously has incredible anger issues. I mean, is there what is your reaction to that when he obviously doesn't want to be on TV or in the news? I mean, anger issues, major, is that whenever you are in a court of law, it is public record. And so individuals from the news and let's say judge determines that they cannot be. So they have the right to be there. But you forcibly pushing a news camera out of the way and harming someone else. All you've done now is display your anger issues. Hopefully that wasn't done in the presence of the jury because that would have even shown further his anger issues. So if that was not

done in the presence of the jury, hopefully that would be better. But if he had done it in the presence of the jury, that only made his case worse. And now you are picking up a new charge as well for now assault against this news camera person. So in no capacity would that have ended well for him. No, absolutely not. And he's going to spend the rest of his life in prison. That was the sentence he received. You know, there must have been some I mean, I'm assuming he will appeal.

Then maybe there will be have been some – I mean, I'm assuming he will appeal. Maybe there will have been some issues with the trial. I can't see him getting a new trial. Obviously, we weren't there for it. But he's going to prison for the rest of his life, and that should not be a shock to anybody. Absolutely not. It's not a shock at all. I mean, like we talked about before, cases before where a person, an adult kills a child in Texas, you qualify for the death penalty. He's not getting the death penalty. You're getting life in prison. And so, of course, more than likely while he is in prison, like you said, it wouldn't be a

surprise if he filed some type of appeal. I don't know what grounds he would have for that until we actually knew some things about the case or the trial. But I don't foresee there being anything that would be appealable based off of what the information that we have. Yeah. Well, all we can hope is that Zavea,

she's resting in peace and that her family can remember her and honor her and somehow, I don't know how, but move forward. Um, you know, horrendous, uh, Bridget Williams, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for having me. That's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.