A 15-year-old girl in Mount Vernon NY, was sentenced to jail after pleading guilty to first-degree manslaughter after she stabbed a cheerleader to death.
According to ABC7NY Kayla Green, 16, died when she was stabbed in the stomach as the result of a ‘long-standing’ cheer rivalry during a huge brawl after the Mount Vernon High School basketball team won the state championship last year.
The attacker, who has not yet been identified because she’s a minor, sobbed in court as she apologized for killing the junior varsity cheer captain, with the judge sentencing her to three to nine years.
Green’s mother, Laverne Gordon, condemned the sentence as a ‘mockery.’
“Today the justice system failed my daughter once again,” Gordon said outside court on Tuesday
. “Her killer gets to get out in three years to live her life to have family, to have a career. My daughter will never see that.”
The suspect was reportedly a part of an independent cheer club that Green was also in before becoming captain of the JV cheerleading squad.
Judge Susan Cacace said Green’s death was a result of: ‘a longstanding rivalry between two cheerleading squads in the city of Mount Vernon.’
Facing the judge on Tuesday, the defendant sobbed as she read a statement expressing her remorse prior to the sentencing.
“I am sorry my actions took away a big sister. I am sorry my actions took away a daughter,’ she said.
“I think of all the different choices I could have made that day that would have left Kayla alive and saved her family this heartache. But that is why everyone is here today, because I made bad choices.”