Someone Dropped The Ball

Baltimore girl, 14, charged as an adult with murder and held without bail

 By Justin Fenton and Liz F. Kay
Baltimore Sun
Thursday, August 26, 2010; B10

 
The two Honduran men sitting on the front steps of a Southeast Baltimore rowhouse couldn't help but chuckle at the sight of a 14-year-old girl clutching a silver revolver and demanding money.
But Arteesha Holt wasn't like most girls her age. A tomboy who liked playing football and basketball, relatives said she also had an explosive temper and was prone to uncontrollable outbursts.
Once, she slung an ashtray across her family's home, tore pictures from the wall and kicked out a heating vent, all because her infant nephew stepped on a bowl of strawberries. The girl's mother says she tried repeatedly to get her daughter help through the juvenile justice system, to no avail.
But the men enjoying the evening of Aug. 13 didn't know all that. So they laughed. And, police say, the seventh-grader pulled the trigger, striking both in the head and killing Jose Rodolfo Gonzalez-Coreas, 43.
Holt was arrested late Tuesday and charged as an adult with first-degree murder. District Court Judge Theodore B. Oshrine ordered her held without bond, following prosecutors' appeals that she is a "danger to the community."
Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi described the shooting as "heinous."
"It speaks to the guns that are out there and the frustrations we in law enforcement have at trying to deal with all this," he said.
Holt's 18-year-old brother, Shawn Palmer, has been charged with being an accomplice to murder. Police say he helped Holt escape and took her silver .32-caliber revolver.
The girl's mother, Raichelle Johnson, 39, said she was horrified by the allegations. She said she worried for her daughter and sought help but never anticipated "in a million years" the situation she faces now.
"I don't condone my child taking a life -- if she took this man's life, then she needs to be prosecuted," Johnson said.
Her mother said Holt's rage often got bottled up, erupting with terrifying results.
"Arteesha is . . . " Johnson paused, searching for the right words. "Unstable."
The girl frequently expressed suicidal thoughts, she said, and over the past two years often hit the streets when she got frustrated, bouncing between relatives.
The shooting occurred in the 100 block of N. Linwood Avenue. Police said an officer was flagged down by Wilmer Bonilla, 26, whose head was grazed by a bullet. The officer found Gonzalez-Coreas lying on the steps of a rowhouse with a gunshot wound to the head.
Gonzalez-Coreas was rushed to Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he was pronounced dead Aug. 20.

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Imagine for moment that you are 14 years old again. Think about the things that you were experiencing at that age...maybe your first kiss, bringing home a report card that you made honor roll on, still watching cartoons, riding bikes with friends....

Now imagine being 14 and carrying a gun. You have decided that you are going to rob someone for some money. They laugh at you because you are so young, so small. You are going to teach them a lesson, the laughter aimed at you upsets you. So,you pull the trigger and end up taking a life.

You can't imagine this can you? Most of us can't relate. I highly doubt that this little girl woke up that morning knowing she was going to kill someone. What kinds of feelings did she live with everyday that made her fly into a rage that seemed uncontrollable? What went through her thoughts that made her contemplate suicide? She is so young; hasn't remotely seen any part of the world-let alone outside of Baltimore city limits. How was she treated by the adults in her life who could have possibly helped or intervened? Where were her supports at to help her deal with all the anger, the pain and the sadness?

Now at the age of 15 she will have to make the transition to an adult world. No one will care how old she is, they will just brand her as another inmate or a number. There will be no one there to help her experience some semblance of her scattered childhood. The Judge that presides over her likely doesn't care about her "feelings", after all she killed someone and his concern is making sure that she's punished heavily.

Her childhood all but over, and maybe her future as well. Languishing in prison isn't the therapeutic environment that she needs to get better. It won't help her deal with the depression or the bouts of madness. prison will make her more depressed, more angry, even more bitter. She is just a child, a child.

One day she'll leave incarceration to return back to our society. There she will find a world that isn't forgiving. When she applies for school or a job she will be discriminated against for something she did so long ago when she didn't know better or really understand the consequences it held in store. She won't be remembered for the pretty pictures she drew as a little girl or how much of a tomboy she was, but she will be remembered for murdering someone. The judge hasn't solved anything by locking her up. What he has done statistically speaking is make sure that there's a greater change that she'll offend again, somehow, someway. She'll have to, because she won't be afforded the opportunity to live a normal existence.

Yesterday a little girl needed someone's help. Tomorrow we'll read about a woman who violated her parole, and went back to the only place that she knew would treat her as an equal to everyone else that lives there.