MEMPHIS, Tenn. — When Leslie Washington found out that cousins Tylan and Brandon McCray were arrested and charged in connection to her daughter Laylah’s murder, she thought they would be charged with the same crime.
As it turned out, Tylan was the only one charged with first-degree murder, and Brandon was charged with accessory to the crime, and he was released on bond 24 hours later. Understandably, this is against Washington’s wishes.
“Let him spend all the holidays in jail like I have to spend the holidays without Laylah,” Washington said. “How is this justice? How did he get out so fast?”
Tylan is charged with murder because he was the one who fired the shots that hit the 2-year-old girl. Brandon was the driver of the Kia they were in at the time, police said.
When WREG originally reported this story in the summer of 2017, police were searching for four people who were inside the car that, for a while, seemed to have vanished without a trace.
“All four of them were involved,” Washington said. “Whether you did it or not, you were in the car, and you kept it a secret.”
While only two people face changes, one charged with murder, the other, a lesser charge, the two female passengers face no charges, and Laylah’s mother can’t believe it.
“You just went on with your life like nothing happened,” she said.
That pact of silence is what hurts her most. She still doesn’t understand how it took this long for investigators to get a break in the case.
“I feel like they aren’t sorry for what they did,” she said. “I think they are sorry because they were caught.”