Judge Sets Bond For Teen Charged In Fatal Stabbing

CHARLOTTE, N.C.,None — A judge set a $100,000 bond Tuesday for a 16-year-old girl charged with killing another teenager last month.

Judge Reagan Miller set Tyesha Roberts's bond almost two weeks after police charged her with fatally stabbing 18-year-old Laqueda Hall.

Miller's decision came at the end of an emotional bond hearing, during which friends and family of both teenagers filled the courtroom and spoke on behalf of each of them.

Prosecutor Glen Cole outlined the evidence against Roberts, saying that Hall went to a home on Pennsylvania Avenue just after midnight on June 24 looking for the father of her 3-month-old child. When she went in the house, witnesses told police Hall attacked Roberts, who then picked up a knife and stabbed Hall in the neck. Cole said a family member drove Hall to the hospital, where she later died.

Roberts' attorney suggested that she had acted in self-defense after Hall punched her and pulled her hair, and Roberts' family agreed.

"If somebody come up behind you and try to beat on you, what you going to do? Just let them beat on you? No. I'm going to defend myself best way I can," Hannah Westbrook, Roberts' cousin, said.

But Hall's family questioned that version of events and the judge's decision to set a bond for Roberts.

"That's not right at all," Kelly Hudson, Hall's cousin who drove her to the hospital, said. "That girl should not be getting out. I don't care ... she shouldn't be getting no bond. I was with my cousin when she died. She died in the backseat of my car. It don't get no worse than that."

Now, prosecutors will let a judge decide where the case goes next. In an unusual move in Charlotte, they have scheduled a probable cause hearing in the case, where a judge will decide if there's enough evidence to take the case to trial.

Previous Stories: June 24, 2010: Police Charge 16-Year-Old Girl In Fatal Stabbing

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