Thursday, November 03, 2005

crime scene

girl

so, wednesday morning i got up and headed out my front door on my way to work and across the street the entire block was taped off by police. police men were standing around and there were a couple police cars parked around and inside the taped off area. i wondered about it all day and then last night on the 6-oclock news, they announced that a 14-year old girl was found dead in the basement of the apartment. apparently at about 1am Wednesday morning police were responding to a "burglary in progress." when they got there, there were no signs of breaking and entering and they found the girl, dead. all day yesterday they interviewed the three men that live at the apartment where she was found. the girl didn't live there...she actually goes to a high school completely on the other side of town....

a police car was there, watching the apartment all night last night. the police and news people are calling it a "suspicious death."
they're not releasing any more information than that. they did an autopsy on the girl Wednesday afternoon but aren't releasing the cause of death yet. the girl was identified and the family has requested that her name not be released yet....

it's just weird. and sad. very sad. this girl was one year older than my youngest brother and only one year younger than my youngest sister....it's just very sad and a little freaky to imagine something like this happening so close....and she was so young...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

A little more info incase you are interesed.
1) they released her name so you can go to any of the news channel websites and find out if you want to.
2) they are saying that it is alcohol related at this point so hopefuly one of your neighbors is not a murderer.
Sorry to hear about this. it is so scary to have something like this happen on your street.

allan said...

wow...that is so crazy! We always think this stuff only happens in the movies. I think the movies get it all from real life. My curious mind has a million questions…
I once had a 16yr old brother of one of one of the girls in my youth group visit on Friday and the next week he was at a party where he tried his first trip on heroin and he overdosed and died. That scared me. Still does.
... but you're right it's sad. There’s something sadly wrong and terribly discomforting when a young person dies.

Teresa said...

well, as it turns out, i do have a murderer for a neighbor. or did anyway. one of the men who lived in the apartment was arrested yesterday afternoon. apparently the girl was strangled to death. alcohol was involved but not the cause of her death. they found her in the bathroom shower. here's some of the story:

[...]Police had labeled Harrison's death "suspicious" from the start; officers discovered her body at Russell's duplex while responding to a burglary call there about 1 a.m. Wednesday.
When officers first arrived, they talked with three men who informed them that the possible burglary suspect was downstairs. Officers didn't find a burglar. They did, however, discover the deceased girl.
Detectives later confirmed that Harrison was part of a group who visited the duplex the night of her death. Police said Russell often let teens hangout and party at his house.

Harrison attended Evergreen High School. At the school on Friday, one of her friends said Harrison had indeed been partying at the house and drinking alcohol with other teens on the night she died.
"We were just getting drunk. That's what we did, we got drunk," said Marquie Casteel, who wouldn't say anything more about what happened that particular night.
Harrison's mother, Stephanie Johnson, said her daughter wasn't a party girl -- just a typical teenager who didn't deserve to die.
"They just took her life like it was nothing," she told KGW Friday prior to the arrest announcement. "I'm very angry." [...]

Meantime, police interviews and court records reviewed by KGW show Russell was convicted of arson in 1997 for setting fire to his ex-girlfriend's apartment in Clark County. He also had prior Arizona convictions in 1980 and 1982 for robbery and kidnapping.
After the arson conviction, a judge declared Russell to be a 'three strikes' felony offender and sentenced him to life without the possibility of parole. A Washington state appeals court later overturned that sentence.[...]

the part that really bugs me about this is that he was sentenced to life in jail whithout parole! why did the court overturn that!?!? the justice system is so screwed up!