COOK COUNTY CRIMINAL COURTHOUSE — A South Side woman armed her 13-year-old daughter with a switchblade Saturday before sending the girl outside to finish a fight, prosecutors alleged.
Moments later, De'Kayla Dansberry was dead — her chest fatally pierced with the blade.
Now, 35-year-old Tamika Gayden is facing charges of first-degree murder and contributing to the criminal delinquency of a minor. She was held without bail Wednesday.
"Here we have another incident where a promising young life was snuffed out in the city of Chicago," Judge James Brown said during Gayden's bond hearing.
Brown lamented the city's 2016 murder rate, calling "235 murders in the last 139 days" an "unprecedented amount of insanity."
He said it takes a village to raise a child, and that Gayden should've defused tension Saturday instead of allegedly exacerbating it.
"We have a situation where it's two little girls having a dispute," Brown said. "One is given a knife by her mother and basically encouraged to kill another little girl. ... It's despicable."
Shortly after the hearing Wednesday afternoon, relatives of both girls got into a fight outside the Leighton Criminal Courthouse, 2600 S. California Ave.
A few men ripped off their shirts before throwing punches. About eight to 10 people were involved in the fight, which had to be broken up by sheriff's deputies. About two dozen deputies ran outside, where several remained posted long after the fight had been broken up.
According to a witness, one of the young men involved in the fight yelled, "You killed my sister!"
Related: Girl Stabbed To Death 'Had Everything Going For Her'
According to prosecutors, the fatal argument that killed De'Kayla started about 7:30 p.m. Saturday in the Washington Park neighborhood, near the Parkway Gardens complex in the 6400 block of South Martin Luther King Drive.
The 13-year-old girl, who has been charged as a juvenile with first-degree murder, was with several witnesses on her third-floor balcony when she spotted De'Kayla and several friends on the street, walking toward a corner store, Assistant State's Attorney Brian Whang said.
The girls shouted at one another before the 13-year-old decided to head outside, prosecutors said.
That's when Gayden allegedly told her daughter to grab a switchblade from Gayden's purse and use it "in the event of a fight," Whang said. The 13-year-old placed the knife in her pocket.
Once the girl was outside, a fistfight broke out, according to witnesses. The 13-year-old stood to the side, not fighting with anyone, until she plunged the knife into De'Kayla's chest, prosecutors said. De'Kayla had been fighting with another girl at the time.
The entire attack was captured on surveillance video.
According to the Sun-Times, the 13-year-old girl came inside and told her mother, "I killed her."
The girl then washed the switchblade, and a witness wrapped it in tape, Whang said. Police later recovered the knife in the girl's home, which she shares with Gayden and other relatives.
According to Gayden's public defender, Gayden has five children, including the 13-year-old. She is a single mother who attended Dunbar Vocational high school until her junior year, when she dropped out due to her first pregnancy, the attorney said.
The girl charged in the crime has not been named because she is a juvenile, per police procedure. She turned herself in to police Monday afternoon and appeared in juvenile court Tuesday. She'll be held in custody pending trial.
Friends of the Johnson College Prep student said De'Kayla was an outgoing and loyal friend. She was on the track team and had enrolled in mentorship programs like Swag the Runway. Police said De'Kayla was 15 years old, while the Cook County Medical Examiner's office said she was 16.
It was not like her to get in fights, since she had "everything going for her," said a friend, Dennis Mapp.
"She was cute; she was on the track team, had trophies," Mapp said at a memorial for the girl. "It was jealousy," he said of the fight that cost De'Kayla her life.
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