Court Watching: Judge Oakley binds Brad Fields over for murder, torture

After a lengthy preliminary exam on Friday, 34th District Court Judge Brian A. Oakley bound Brad Edwards Fields over to circuit court to face trial on murder charges.
Fields, 28, is scheduled for an arraignment on the information, possibly May 16 at the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice.
Fields was charged with felony murder, second-degree murder, child abuse, and torture. During Friday’s exam two other charges were added: conspiracy to commit first degree child abuse and conspiracy to commit second degree child abuse.
On April 11 it was announced that after a psychiatric exam, Fields had been found competent to face murder charges in the death of his girlfriend’s four-year-old child, Gabrielle Barrett, in a Sumpter Township mobile home on New Year’s Day.
He has been lodged in the Wayne County Jail without bond since he and the child’s mother were returned to Michigan after they were arrested in Georgia as they were attempting to flee to Florida.
His co-defendant, the child’s mother Candice Renea Diaz, 25, is being held without bond on the same charges. She had been sent for a competency exam, as well, but the court has yet to get the results of the exam.
On Friday, a Channel 4 News camera was present in the jury box to record testimony from seven witnesses, including the child’s grandmother Cynthia Diaz; Sumpter Township Police Officer George Salajan; Miranda Irwin and Heather Vitta, forensic scientists with the Michigan State Police; the child’s school principal Kerry Shelton; Sumpter Police Sgt. Elizabeth Egerer; and Sumpter Det./Sgt. John Toth.
Sgt. Egerer and Det. Toth read cellphone messages back and forth between the couple on what they were doing or going to do to the child.
On New Year’s Day at about 10:43 a.m., police were called to Greenmeadow Drive in Rawsonville Woods and found a family member administering CPR. The girl was unresponsive with several burns to her extremities. She was transported to the hospital where she was pronounced dead. After the medical examiner ruled the child’s death as a homicide, the couple fled the state.
In May 2016 the couple was at the center of a daylong case that brought the Michigan State Police Tactical Response Unit to 84 Greenmeadow to help Sumpter Police because it was believed Fields was armed and barricaded in the home.
Fields was arrested on two felony charges: possession of a weapon by a felon and felony firearm. He also was charged with the misdemeanor of aggravated assault. Fields’ felony charges were dismissed by Judge Oakley.
Diaz was arrested then, as well, and she got two years of probation after pleading guilty to alteration of gun markings and possession of prescription forms. A warrant was put out for her arrest on Jan. 8 for violation of probation after the most recent charges.