Oct. 28--For a moment, it was possible to imagine the 15-year-old girl in a floral print dress was in class Tuesday as she swiveled in her chair to view a video monitor.
But the approximately two-minute video -- played in Cook County juvenile court -- showed the girl, then 14, firing a silver .38-caliber revolver at another group of teenage girls, fatally striking 14-year-old Endia Martin in the back as she ran inside a friend's South Side house.
By the end of the hearing, Judge Rodney Hughes Brooks made a long-awaited decision, rejecting a bid by prosecutors for the defendant to be tried as an adult.
In making his ruling, Brooks noted that what had been a planned fight in a long-running feud since the girls attended eighth grade had escalated after the defendant's uncle gave her a gun and her aunt urged her to "shoot the bitch."
"What started out as mutual combat by these teenagers morphed into a tragedy as a result of adult intervention," the judge said.
His ruling means that the girl, if convicted of Endia's murder, will likely be released from custody when she turns 21.
If the girl was 15 at the time of the killing, she would have been automatically charged as an adult, but she was less than three months from her 15th birthday.
The Tribune is not naming her because she has been charged as a juvenile.
The parents of both Endia and the defendant attended Tuesday's hearing but declined to comment after the judge's decision.
Endia's stepfather has been outspoken in the past, saying that penalties in the juvenile court system are too light for an offense as serious as his daughter's killing.
"This law is basically saying to little 14-year-olds that you're able to shoot somebody, kill them and get away with it because you'll get out in a few years," the stepfather, Kent Kennedy, told the Tribune last year.
But the trend appears to be headed in a more lenient direction for juvenile offenders. In a ruling last year, the Illinois Supreme Court said that the legislature should take notice of advances in understanding how teenage brains develop and rewrite the law on which crimes involving young suspects are automatically transferred to adult court.
In June, the state legislature passed a law that eliminates automatic transfers of 15-year-olds no matter how serious the crime they face. Those charged with murder, aggravated criminal sexual assault or aggravated battery with a firearm who are 16 and older will still be automatically transferred to adult court.
Tuesday's hearing in juvenile court provided new details of Endia's shocking killing in April 2014 in the Back of the Yards neighborhood as well as the defendant's background.
According to her lawyers, the defendant idolized her slain father after his killing in a drive-by shooting when she was an infant and was enraged when one of her rivals taunted her about his death.
The defendant's intended target that day was allegedly a 16-year-old friend of Endia's. Two weeks earlier the defendant was alone when she was jumped by a group of girls that included the 16-year-old and Endia, one of the defendant's friends told investigators.
A little more than a day before the shooting, the 16-year-old girl allegedly wrote the defendant on Facebook that "I want to fight for real" and "bitch you gonna die," according to evidence presented by the defendant's lawyers.
While riding the bus to the scene of the confrontation in the 900 block of West Garfield Boulevard, two witnesses said the teen's aunt, Vandetta Redwood, told the friends "they better whip their asses."
As nearly 30 people gathered, the 16-year-old held a padlock attached to a string. Redwood handed a .38 special to her niece, telling her, "She disrespected your daddy," one witness told police.
The defendant struck the 16-year-old in the head with the gun and then attempted to fire it, but it jammed, prosecutors have said. She then handed it to Redwood, who got the weapon unstuck and handed it back. The teen then fired three shots, sending everyone running.
The scene was captured on a shaky cellphone video played in court.
Prosecutors charged Redwood with obstruction of justice and mob action, but a judge threw out the charges after viewing the video.
The 16-year-old girl sustained only a graze wound to her arm.
According to defense lawyers, the defendant felt indebted to her paternal uncle, Donnell Flora, who she believed had saved her life by pushing her from the path of bullets in a 2010 gang shooting that left him paralyzed.
Flora is awaiting trial on charges he supplied the gun to his niece.
On Tuesday prosecutors argued that the defendant belonged in adult court because the shooting was a "premeditated, calculated action" planned out the day before, not an impulsive lashing out by a teenage brain.
"She called her uncle and said, 'Look, I need a gun,' " said Assistant State's Attorney Athena Farmakis.
Farmakis also argued that keeping the defendant in juvenile court "rewarded" her calculated behavior and that giving a pass to her actions because of the violence she'd experienced in her Back of the Yards neighborhood sent the wrong message.
"You're devaluing lives in (Back of the Yards)," Farmakis said. "A human life is a human life no matter where a person lives."
She also read into the record accounts of the girl's behavioral problems while being held at the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, including two major infractions for fighting.
But Elizabeth Tarzia, the defendant's assistant public defender, said the girl had been an honor-roll student at Hope College Prep High School who had never been in trouble with the law before. Since being taken into custody, she has kept up a 3.6 GPA, ranking second in her class of 115 students.
Tarzia argued that what happened in 2014 "was a perfect storm for a young teen brain."
"This was not a premeditated shooting," she said. "This was a girl fight that was put together on Facebook with the victims as willing participants."
"But for the actions of adults ... this would have remained a girl fight," Tarzia said.
After the judge's ruling, the defendant stood, turned and smiled at her family.
She wants to be a registered nurse someday, her lawyers said.
It's the same profession Endia once dreamed of pursuing, following in her mother's footsteps.
sschmadeke@tribpub.com
