Suspect's Mom Held Without Bail For Supplying Knife In Teen's Stabbing Death
CHICAGO (CBS) -- A 35-year-old woman has been ordered held without bail, accused of giving her daughter a switchblade the girl later used to kill 15-year-old De'Kayla Dansberry on Saturday.
Tamika Gayden and her 13-year-old daughter have been charged with first-degree murder in the fatal stabbing. Her daughter has not been named, because she is charged as a juvenile.
Prosecutors said Gayden told her daughter to get a switchblade from her purse in case of a fight.
The 13-year-old appeared before a Juvenile Court judge Tuesday afternoon. Prosecutors have said the girl left home with the knife, and stabbed De'Kayla in the chest during a fight on Saturday. Rev. Corey Brooks, who is pastor of a church both De'Kayla and her alleged killer attended, said an earlier argument led to that fight.
According to prosecutors, the girl who stabbed De'Kayla returned home and washed the knife in the sink and later told two witnesses, "I killed her, I killed her."
Courthouse deputies said De'Kayla's family and Gayden's relatives got into a fistfight outside the courthouse after the bond hearing. It was not immediately clear if there were any arrests.
Cook County Judge James Brown, in denying Gayden bail, called the murder "despicable and unconscionable," and mourned a "powerful young life snuffed out."
Brown lamented the 235 murders in 139 days in Chicago this year as "unprecedented insanity."
Photos and video of the fight have been posted on social media, and prosecutors said there is video evidence of the stabbing, but did not say if it came from a bystander's cell phone.
De'Kayla was stabbed in the upper chest about 7:45 p.m. Saturday in the 6500 block of South King Drive, according to Chicago Police and the Cook County medical examiner's office. She was taken to Stroger Hospital, where she died at 8:24 p.m.
De'Kayla was a freshman at Johnson College Prep, and was a sprinter on the track team, and was getting ready to run in the state finals.
The stabbing occurred on what has come to be known as "O-Block," the site of a long-running war between two rival South Side gangs in the Parkway Gardens neighborhood, but De'Kayla's pastor, Rev. Corey Brooks said the fight was between two groups of girls who knew each other.