The alleged June Rottweiler attack was caught on the family security camera recovered by Florida police.
In a series of clips, described by investigators in a 10-page arrest affidavit obtained by PEOPLE, Tyshael Elise Martin is allegedly “seen holding the leash of the dog,” and encouraging it to bite 9-year-old Jamaria Sessions as the girl lay on the floor.
Martin later allegedly kicked Jamaria to the floor, and “grabbed the child by her hair, pulling her” toward the staircase and “repeatedly” striking and shaking her, according to the footage described in the affidavit.
“I’m fixin’ to kill her,” Martin says, per the investigators’ transcription.
On Aug. 28, detectives arrested the 34-year-old on charges of first-degree murder, aggravated child abuse and child neglect in connection with the death of her boyfriend’s daughter, who lived with her, according to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office.
Two days later, Jamaria’s father, Lojuan Sessions, was arrested and charged with aggravated manslaughter of a child, according to police.
It was not immediately clear if either had entered a plea or retained counsel, although Martin appeared in court for the first time Aug. 29, according to law enforcement.
Tyshael Elise Martin.
Lake County Sheriff’s Office
Her arrest followed a search warrant in which investigators obtained the in-home video footage of the fatal June 15 attack by the family’s 103-lb. Rottweiler.
Jamaria – who was living with her father’s estranged girlfriend and her children as well as another sibling at the time of the attack – was treated differently from the others, investigators allege in the affidavit.
Martin’s 17-year-old daughter later told investigators, per the affidavit, that Jamaria was disciplined by Martin, Sessions and herself, but that other children in the house “also had permission to physically punish Jamaria,” who was allegedly forced to do wall-sits and run in place or on a treadmill.
Although the other children had rooms of their own, Jamaria was allegedly forced to “sleep on the couch or on a crib-sized mattress in another child’s room, and had nothing outside of clothing, to call her own,” per the affidavit.
The girl spent her childhood passing between adults following her mother’s death. She lived with her maternal grandmother until shortly after her father’s release from jail in August 2023, per the affidavit.
That October, she moved in with Sessions and Martin, with whom he shared a biological child.
The couple had a criminal history of dealing or possession of illegal narcotics and exposing their children to dangerous situations, per the affidavit, which notes that in 2020 Sessions was sentenced to five years in prison for trafficking in MDMA and two counts of felony child neglect.
Fleeing law enforcement with three children in his vehicle, he had crashed, gravely injuring two, who were air-lifted to a hospital, per the affidavit.
Sessions later told investigators that the couple fought on June 12 and he moved out the following day, leaving his daughter behind, the affidavit claims.
Four days later, an anonymous 911 caller reported an unresponsive child, who was cold to the touch, per the affidavit.
First-responders pronounced the naked child dead, noting she had “a significant number of abrasions, small punctures, burns, possible bite marks, and bruising covering her body, all in various stages of healing,” per the affidavit. Jamaria’s face was swollen and she had multiple broken teeth.
The medical examiner ruled her death a homicide, caused by “complications of multiple blunt injuries of head, torso, and extremities and thermal injury of right foot,” per the affidavit.
Investigators say the injuries were consistent with physical abuse.
