A mother of three who had posted a desperate call for help on Facebook was murdered in front of her children less than 24 hours after her estranged husband was released from jail on no bail for an assault she had seen on tape.
The terrible episode, which occurred near the hometown of Governor Kathy Hochul in western New York, has renewed resentment toward the state’s no-cash-bail laws as well as toward the governor and other Democrats for their opposition to their repeal.
Keaira Bennefield, 30, was shot and killed by her husband Adam Bennefield, 45, who was previously convicted of kidnapping another ex-girlfriend under duress.
On the morning of Oct. 5, the victim was ambushed on a road and shot to death while driving her young children, who ranged in age from 6 months to 9 years, to school.
Despite the horrifying assault on his wife inside her house, Bennefield was freed from detention a day earlier on only misdemeanour charges, leaving him free to carry out the suspected murder.
Less than a week before she was killed, Keaira Bennefield posted the disturbing video of Bennefield allegedly beating, kicking, and slapping her on Facebook.
Now, concerns over whether more could have been done to stop Keaira’s death have gotten worse in the weeks following the gruesome murder.
According to the Buffalo News, the incident began on September 28 when Keaira contacted 911 to report that Bennefield had assaulted her at her home.
Following the domestic violence call, Cheektowaga Police acquired an arrest warrant for Bennefield for harassment.
Police said Keaira didn’t require hospitalization for treatment and advised her to phone if her estranged husband visited the house again.
Later that night, with the chilling caption, “This is what this man does [sic] to me but I’m always treated like I’m the abuser!” the mother released the horrifying video that had been caught on security cameras inside her house.
In the roughly eight-minute video, Bennefield is purportedly shown tackling, pinning down, and viciously striking his wife.
A week after the attack, Bennefield was detained after Keaira presented the police with the video.
Bennefield was only charged with several petty offences, including third-degree assault, fourth-degree criminal mischief, second-degree menacing, and second-degree unlawful confinement, despite the severe beating he received.
Concerning three counts of endangering the welfare of a child, aggravated criminal contempt, and murder, Bennefield has entered a not-guilty plea.
State law forbade the court from setting bond because of the low level of the allegations when he was arraigned in Cheektowaga Town Court on October 4, according to Erie County District Attorney John J. Flynn.
“There was zero evidence for anything higher than that,” Flynn said of the misdemeanour charges. “The charges were correctly charged. The judge had no choice but to release this person.”
Adding insult to injury, because the Empire State is one of the few in the US that doesn’t permit judges to weigh the “dangerousness” of a perp in considering bail, the judge was unable to even consider Bennefield’s conviction in 2000 and 15-year prison sentence for kidnapping an ex-girlfriend and another woman at gunpoint under the bail reforms implemented by the Democratic-controlled state Legislature and upheld by Hochul.
Even if Bennefield had been charged with an offence that qualified for bail, the court was still not permitted by the statute to take dangerousness into account. One advocate for giving courts the authority to remand criminals regarded as a threat to the community rather than just whether they are likely to appear at the next court date is Albany Mayor Eric Adams.
Nothing of the sort was accomplished by the later order of protection that the judge in Keaira’s case ordered.
The next morning, Keaira reportedly put on a bulletproof vest and started the school run because she was so terrified for her life. Her estranged spouse is accused of crashing into her car as she was taking the kids to school, taking out a shotgun, firing the fatal shot, and then running away.
After a massive manhunt, he was apprehended a week later and has since been detained without bail. At his hearing on October 21, Bennefield pled not guilty to three counts of endangering the welfare of a child, severe criminal contempt, and murder. He is scheduled to appear in court again on Wednesday.
On October 5, when Keaira Bennefield was driving her kids to school, she was shot and killed.
DA Flynn demanded that the bail legislation be changed following the arraignment so that a judge might take dangerousness into account.
“This could easily be solved with one sentence in the bail law. You don’t have to throw it all out the window,” Flynn told reporters.
“I was an advocate of bail reform initially. I still am an advocate for the majority parts of the bail reform law. I believe the law went too far. I believe that provisions need to be made to the law.”
Republican state senator Edward Rath criticized the present bail regulations; his new district encompasses parts of Buffalo and Western New York.
“The judge had to release her [alleged] killer Adam Bennefield because there was no dangerous standard to detain him,” Rath told The Post.
“She predicted her husband would kill her. She wore a bulletproof vest. It’s disgusting.”
Meanwhile, Republican candidate for governor Lee Zeldin accused his rival, Gov. Kathy Hochul, of failing to take action to overturn cashless bail rules.
“Kathy Hochul claims she needs more ‘data’ to repeal cashless bail and give judges discretion to weigh dangerousness,” Zeldin said in a statement at the time. “The reality is that there is a ton of data, and behind these data points are victims.”
In this instance, three children will grow up without a mother because she was just murdered on a Wednesday by a suspect who had been let go on cashless bail the day before.
“The judge did not have the discretion to weigh dangerousness and keep the suspect detained. Hochul’s pandering to her pro-criminal allies just cost three kids a mother.”
Advocates for victims of domestic violence concurred that when setting bail, judges should be able to consider a history of similar behaviour.
“We’re seeing very serious problems now with the way, not just courts but prosecutors’ offices, are handling domestic violence cases and this has been complicated by some unintended consequences of criminal justice reforms sadly,”
The Post was informed by Dorchen Leidholdt, director of Sanctuary for Families Center for Battered Women’s Legal Services.
“I know a lot of leading domestic violence organizations advocated a different standard for bail so judges could consider dangerousness, and lethality in the context of domestic violence into consideration and did not succeed in that reform.
“So the result is that domestic violence victims are left under-protected in New York state and are at the mercy of their abusers at a time when we’re seeing heightened instances of domestic violence, a high degree of danger in domestic violence cases.”
Leidholdt noted that Keaira was a victim of a “system failure” and that women of colour have the highest risk of intimate partner homicide.
