Monday afternoon, just after 1:30 pm, 48-year-old Krisinda Ann Bright called 911 to report that she had shot and killed her two daughters. She told the dispatcher that the firearm used was unloaded and sitting on the dining room table.
Patrolman Michael McQuaide was one of the first to respond to the Ambridge, Pennsylvania residence. He found Bright waiting on the porch of the home with "dried blood splatter" on her hands, arms and clothing. When he asked if she was bleeding, she said it was from her children.
She took the officers into the home, which officers described as a "gruesome scene" and was taken into custody without incident. She remains in the Beaver County Jail without bond, awaiting her preliminary hearing which has been scheduled for March 2 at 10:00 am.
Bright has been charged with two counts of criminal homicide.
According to statements made to investigators, Bright reported that she had shot her elder daughter, 22-year-old Jasmine Cannady in the head while she was lying in bed and then headed downstairs.
Her younger daughter, 16-year-old Kiara Bright, who self-identified as a boy and went by the name of Jeffrey, pleaded for her life saying, "please don't shoot, I'm gonna call the police."
The gun evidently did not fire at her first attempt so "Bright fixed the gun and then shot" Kiara in the face. The wound however, was not fatal so Bright shot her once more because she did not want her daughter "to suffer."
Rick Mattia, a member of National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Beaver County had worked directly with both Jasmine and Kiara through the local PRISM group, a local youth organization for those that identified as LGBTQ+.
"It was hard to wrap my head around that something like this happened to close to home and people I care about," Mattia was quoted as saying by WPXI.
PRISM organized a vigil for the two on the evening of February 23 at 6:00 pm and established a GoFundMe for memorial expenses and to "assist their grieving family members."
A neighbor of the Bright family spoke with WTAE, postulating that Bright may have been struggling with a mental illness during the shootings.
"A couple of months ago," Sam Bruno said, "she was gone for a couple of days. I asked her where she was. She said that she had committed herself into psychiatric help. we were friendly, we talked."
Bruno told the Post Gazette that, "We all know she shot her daughters. But Kris wasn't that person. She is a person with problems. I just feel really bad for her." He went on to say that, "They may mark her as a murderer, but Kris didn't do that. She was retired military" that would do online shopping with her kids for others and from what he had seen, was always "good to her kids."