A 15-year-old New York girl who fatally stabbed a 16-year-old cheerleader in April has been sentenced to up to nine years in prison.
The teenager, who has not been publicly identified because of her age, pleaded guilty last month to first-degree murder in the death of Mount Vernon High School sophomore Kayla Green.
The teenage suspect was sentenced Tuesday to three to nine years in prison, the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office said.
The April 8 stabbing occurred after a parade honoring the boys basketball team at Mount Vernon High School for winning the state championship.
A “fight” involving some of the cheerleaders broke out after an off-campus celebration, then-Mount Vernon City Schools Superintendent Kenneth Hamilton, who has since left his position, said in an April live stream on the district’s Facebook page.
It is not clear what caused the altercation. Green and the defendant were members of the Supreme All Stars, an independent cheerleading team, and Green later became a Mount Vernon High School cheerleader, according to LoHud, which covers the Lower Hudson Valley.
The defendant stabbed Green in the abdomen on Gramatan Avenue in Mount Vernon, prosecutors said. Green was hospitalized and died from her injuries.
The teenage suspect was arrested later that evening in Dobbs Ferry.
Another student was injured, but is expected to make a full recovery, police said at the time. An additional assault charge related to that injury was dropped, the district attorney’s office said.
District Attorney Miriam Rocah said in a sentencing statement, “The young defendant senselessly took Kayla Green’s life and left a devastated community.”
The defendant will be in the custody of the state Office of Children and Family Services until she turns 18. After that, she will be transferred to the custody of the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, the district attorney’s office said.
The defendant addressed the family in court and tearfully apologized.
“I wish I could do more than say I’m sorry,” she said, according to NBC New York.
But the apology did not go down well with the victim’s family.
“My family is broken and our hearts will never mend,” Green’s mother Lavern Green said outside the court after the sentencing.
“Three years for murder is nothing. That’s nothing. We got to visit the grave to see my niece,” said Tasania Rhoden, the victim’s aunt. “And in the meantime, there’s a young woman who will be outside jumping three years from now.”
Lauren Raysor, an attorney for the Green family, said after the sentencing: “Every client, every system has failed. We had a young lady at school who was causing chaos in the Mount Vernon school system.
“They were fully aware of what this young lady was doing in this school and she was a danger to all the young people who were in the school and they did nothing,” she said.
NBC News has reached out to the school district and the accused teenager’s attorney for comment.
CORRECTION (January 25, 2023, 9:30 p.m. ET): An earlier version of this article misspelled the last name of the Westchester County District Attorney. She is Miriam Rocah, not Roach.
Marlene Lenthang is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital.
