Neighbors Saw Anger in Girl, 9, Accused in Killing

NY Times ^ | June 1, 2005 | MICHAEL WILSON

[neverdem]

The 9-year-old girl's mother was gone only briefly Monday, running upstairs to the 11th floor to borrow a hair-straightening comb to help give the girl braids before a barbecue downstairs in the courtyard.

The girl was playing with one of her closest friends, with whom she spent so much time that some thought they were related, an 11-year-old named Queen Washington. Everyone called her Queenie. In the 9-year-old's apartment on the seventh floor of the Linden Houses in East New York, Brooklyn, the two girls began to fight over a ball, the police said.

As any parent will tell, even the gentlest child has an occasional tantrum. But the 9-year-old, while bright and inventive, struck some of her neighbors as a different kind, a girl who often showed flashes of nasty, violent anger when she did not get her way.

"As long as things go in her favor, she was a sweet, beautiful young girl," said Kahindà Lannigan, 42, a retired home care worker who lives in the girl's building. "But when the tides were in favor of other children, she'll hit, kick, scratch, scream and spit. She'd hit anyone on the head with a bottle if she was fighting. She'd beat them any way she could."

Still, the adults who knew her said yesterday, no one would imagine her capable of killing.

The police said the 9-year-old stabbed Queenie in the chest with a steak knife. The blade perforated the older girl's heart, killing her as she stumbled out of the apartment and tried to make it to the elevator down the hall, the police said.

[Ciexyz]

The film "The Bad Seed" was from a different time -- when there were standard, accepted values and people believed in the difference between good and evil.

[schoolbymom]

Some children are shy by nature... And some have been verbally abused and/or given a tongue lashing when the parent is out of earshot by an adult (sometimes even when the parent just ran in the house to use the restroom). This child can become frightened of the adult and tends to whisper their comments because they are afraid.