A Delco woman faced her daughter’s killer in court after caring for the granddaughter who survived the shooting

Tylicia Bell named her granddaughter Miracle for a reason.

Despite the trying circumstances of her birth, the child is alive.

Bell’s days are now dedicated to caring for 18-month-old Miracle, who relies on a machine to breathe. Miracle’s mother, Taniyah Bell, was eight months pregnant when the baby’s father, Kaiheem Williams, shot her in the head in the Lansdowne apartment they shared, killing her instantly.

Williams, 20, was convicted of third-degree murder last month after a trial in which prosecutors condemned him for a lack of remorse as he insisted the November 2024 shooting was accidental.

Delaware County Court Judge Margaret Amoroso sentenced Williams to 22 to 44 years in state prison on Thursday, saying she could not fathom the pain felt by Bell and her family.

“I wish I had the power to bring Taniyah back, and if I could, Tylicia, I would,” Amoroso told Bell. “I see your pain, I do. I see it, but I can’t imagine it.”

Bell, for her part, made her feelings about Williams clear.

“I feel that he should not be able to come home, because I know him like the back of my hand,” said Bell, whose daughter had dated Williams for nearly three years and lived with him in Lansdowne. “I know in my heart that he planned this, no matter what he said in court.”

In the excruciating hours that followed the fatal shooting, Bell was told her granddaughter was brain-dead. Doctors recommended that Miracle be taken off life support. But Bell, a retired nurse, was adamant that they wait.

True to her name, Miracle stirred and showed signs of life. Bell held the newborn and pressed her to her heart, just as she had hoped to see her daughter do.

In the months that followed, Miracle got stronger and was released from the hospital and into her care. She upgraded the electricity in her Clifton Heights home to support the machines needed to keep the child alive.

More than a year later, Miracle can turn her head and is able to move her arms and legs. But caring for the child is a full-time job. Bell takes the night shift, while her mother cares for her great-granddaughter during the day. They give the girl her medication, rotate her every two hours to prevent bedsores, and take her to all of her doctor appointments.

“Sometimes I feel frustration and rage, because I look at her and it makes me think of her dad and what he did,” Bell said in an interview this week.

“But when I look at her and I’m caring for her, it makes me think of my daughter and what she would want me to do. She would want me to raise her daughter the way I raised her, and it’s just a feeling of joy.

“My grandbaby brightens my day.”

Caring for Miracle, Bell said, has helped her navigate the grief of losing her only child.

Taniyah Bell, 19, had dreams of becoming a nurse, and was studying the profession while preparing for the arrival of her baby. Even after she moved in with Williams in the months before her death, she was a frequent presence in her mother’s home as she was poised to become a mother herself.

Without her, Bell said, her three-bedroom house feels empty. Sometimes, as she is cooking a meal, she said, she starts to call up to her daughter to tell her the food is ready.

Then reality sets in, she said. And the grief she feels is suffocating.

“My daughter was going to be somebody,” Bell said. “I’m not saying I’m not grateful, but I wish God would have given us a little more. Just a little more.”

She said Taniyah Bell’s relationship with Williams had been abusive. The couple argued, and once, during a heated dispute, Williams encouraged her to have an abortion.

Bell said she had tried to intervene in the discord, sometimes taking her daughter back to her childhood home to escape the conflict. Still, she said, she never envisioned that things would escalate to murder.

She plans to start a foundation in her daughter’s name, dedicated to providing resources to women in abusive relationships.

“I just want young girls to know that when your mom is telling you something from experience, she’s not trying to ruin your life,” Bell said, fighting back tears. “She’s trying to protect you.”

In court Thursday, Williams offered a tearful apology to Bell and her family, saying he was truly sorry for what he had done.

“I know y’all hate me, but it’s OK,” he said. “Yes, I am ashamed. I wish I could take all y’all’s pain and throw it away.”

Williams said he was not seeking forgiveness from Bell, because he had yet to forgive himself.

“Everyone in this courtroom knows the bad choices I made, but not everyone knows the man I am every day,” he said, “and that I carry my pain with me every day.”

In the end, Bell said, she could not save her daughter, but she left the hearing satisfied the judge who decided Williams’ fate knew what he took from her — and from Miracle.

She told the judge about the vibrant young woman whose life Williams extinguished. She talked about the miracle baby who survived his violence. And she made the case that he should pay for crimes with decades in prison.

Bell struggled with depression for years, she said, and she sometimes felt as if her reason for living was her daughter. Now, she said, she is living for her granddaughter.