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You Should Never Have Had Kids, Judge Tells Mom Of Teen Charged With Murder

By Erica Demarest | December 8, 2016 7:22pm | Updated on December 9, 2016 10:05am
 Tamika Gayden, 35, has been charged with first degree murder of De'Kayla Dansberry. Gayden, right, allegedly gave her 13-year-old daughter a knife that was used to fatally stab De'Kayla.
Tamika Gayden, 35, has been charged with first degree murder of De'Kayla Dansberry. Gayden, right, allegedly gave her 13-year-old daughter a knife that was used to fatally stab De'Kayla.
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Facebook; Chicago Police Department

COOK COUNTY CRIMINAL COURTHOUSE — An exasperated Cook County judge went off on a Chicago mother and her "stupid" alleged crime Thursday, saying the mother accused of giving her 13-year-old daughter a switchblade for a deadly fight should never have had children.

Tamika Gayden is charged with murder for arming her daughter in a fight over a boy that ended with the May 14 stabbing death of 15-year-old De'Kayla Dansberry, a promising student-athlete, prosecutors said.

Gayden's daughter is charged as a juvenile with murder. During a court hearing Thursday for the girl, who is not being named because of her age, her mother was brought from her own jail cell to the Juvenile Courthouse, where she sat shackled in front of Judge Stuart Paul Katz.

"Despite all my years in the criminal justice system," Katz said, "I am still confounded by murders. All murders are senseless and stupid, and this one ranks right up there as one of the most senseless and stupidest I've ever seen."

"I just need to get that out there," the judge continued. "How stupid all of this is."

He called Gayden's alleged crime "utterly galling."

"This is a woman who never should've had children," Katz said. "She should never again be allowed to have children in her care or custody."

Prosecutors said Gayden gave her daughter a switchblade before sending the girl outside to finish the fight. The daughter, now 14, is charged with fatally stabbing Dansberry in her chest.

RELATED: 'You Killed My Sister': Brawl Erupts Outside Hearing For Teen Girl Stabbing

After mother and daughter appeared before Katz for two hours Thursday, the judge decided the daughter should be tried and sentenced as a juvenile.

Before announcing his decision, Katz took time to admonish Gayden, who sat shackled behind her daughter. Gayden has been held without bail since May on charges of first-degree murder and contributing to the criminal delinquency of a child.

Katz slammed Gayden's involvement in the fight and suggested Dansberry might still be alive if Gayden hadn't intervened in a teenage matter.

Katz said the girl's "likelihood of rehabilitation" is high if she accesses various educational and health programs during her time in county lockup. The judge pointed out that most Cook County staffers are probably "far more mature, far more responsible than the people she has been around in the past."

Prosecutors had petitioned for the girl to be tried as an adult. During Thursday's hearing, Assistant State's Attorney Elizabeth Schweizer said the girl's attack on Dansberry was "not a matter of self-defense. ... This was premeditated."

Schweizer continued: "This murder occurred to a teenage girl in broad daylight on the street."

Public defenders pointed out that the girl got good grades and had no prior criminal history. Adolescent brains are far more susceptible to peer influence, the attorneys said, and less likely to consider long-term effects.

Assistant Public Defender Tamar Sirkin said, Gayden moved her children 13 times in the past five years, often staying with relatives or boyfriends, "cramped into somebody else's residence, always starting over."

Sirkin said Dansberry's death "has profoundly affected" the girl.

When Gayden was charged, her judge called the crime "despicable."

"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 summer 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 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."

According to prosecutors, the fatal argument that killed Dansberry started about 7:30 p.m. on a Saturday night in the Washington Park neighborhood, near the Parkway Gardens complex in the 6400 block of South Martin Luther King Drive.

Gayden's daughter was with several witnesses on her third-floor balcony when she spotted Dansberry and several friends on the street, walking toward a corner store, prosecutors said.

The girls shouted at one another before Gayden's daughter decided to head outside, prosecutors said.

That's when Gayden told her daughter to grab a switchblade from Gayden's purse and use it "in the event of a fight," prosecutors said. The then-13-year-old placed the knife in her pocket.

Once the girl was outside, a fist fight broke out, according to witnesses. The 13-year-old stood to the side, not fighting with anyone, until she plunged the knife into Dansberry's chest, prosecutors said. Dansberry 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, prosecutors 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 14-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.

Friends of Dansberry said the Johnson College Prep student was an outgoing and loyal friend. She was on the track team and had enrolled in mentorship programs like Swag the Runway. 

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 her her life.

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