Prosecutor: Mom told murder suspect, 13, to get knife from purse
CHICAGO -- The mother of a 13-year-old charged with murder is accused of giving her daughter the switchblade she allegedly used to kill 15-year-old DeKayla Dansberry on May 14, reports CBS Chicago.
Tamika Gayden, 35, has been ordered held without bail. She and her daughter, who has not been named because she is a juvenile, are charged with first-degree murder.
Prosecutors said Gayden told her daughter to get a switchblade from her purse in case of a fight. The girl is accused of stabbing Dansberry in the chest.
Rev. Corey Brooks, who is pastor of a church both Dansberry and her alleged killer attended, said an earlier argument led to that fight, CBS Chicago reports.
According to prosecutors, the girl who stabbed Dansberry returned home and washed the knife in the sink and later told two witnesses, "I killed her, I killed her."
Courthouse deputies reportedly said Dansberry's family and Gayden's relatives got into a fistfight outside the courthouse after the teen's bond hearing Tuesday.
In denying Gayden bail, Cook County Judge James Brown 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 fatal encounter 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. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Assistant State's Attorney Brian Whang said that surveillance footage captured the 13-year-old stab Dansberry.
Dansberry 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.
Dansberry was a freshman at Johnson College Prep, and was a sprinter on the track team. She was reportedly 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 Dansberry's pastor, Rev. Corey Brooks, said the fight was between two groups of girls who knew each other.