‘The day was going so well,’ said Fort Worth girl, 14, accused of killing her friend
It started out as a great day.
But then an argument broke out and got out of hand before a 14-year-old girl unintentionally killed her best friend, the accused testified during her murder trial on Wednesday.
Nylah Lightfoot, 14, died May 29 after being taken to John Peter Smith Hospital with stab wounds to her neck and chest after a fight at the Sycamore Center Villas apartment complex turned deadly shortly before 3:30 a.m.
The girl accused of stabbing Lightfoot, who is not being identified because she is a minor, testified that after the two fought she went into her house to grab a knife to frighten her friend because she did not want to fight anymore.
But Lightfoot never acted frightened, according to witness testimony.
“She walked up on me and said ‘stick me, stick me, I want to die anyways,’” the accused girl testified. “She ran up on me and she swung at me and I reacted. My intent was never to harm her. She was my friend.”
Testimony in the murder trial for Lightfoot’s friend began Tuesday. The suspect faces murder and aggravated assault charges. If found guilty of murder, she could get anywhere from probation to 40 years in prison, with the possibility of transfer to an adult prison at age 19, according to prosecutors.
The aggravated assault charge stems from the teen allegedly swinging a kitchen knife at one of her other friends who tried to stop Lightfoot’s killing, according to witness testimony. The friend grabbed the arm of the accused, who continued to swing the knife around until the friend got scared and let go of her arm, the girl who allegedly tried to stop the fight testified on Tuesday.
The accused told the jury that she was acting on instinct and anger during the stabbing and that she fought Lightfoot because she did not want her friend to feel that she was weak.
Things were not supposed to turn out that way, according to the accused.
“I couldn’t believe what had just happened,” the accused testified. “The day was going so well.”
There were four girl friends, aged 13 and 14, who started the summer day at a pool party, and then spent the rest of the afternoon at Lightfoot’s apartment listening to music, dancing and placing video of the dancing on Instagram, the girl testified. They were talking about spending the night together but there were too many girls, the accused said.
Lightfoot had a full-sized bed and not everyone would fit. The accused said she told Lightfoot that she was going home.
“I was not mad at Nylah,” the suspect testified. “She was irritated and she took it out on me. We got into an argument. Nylah was mad because I did not spend the night at her house.”
The accused said she slammed the door of Lightfoot’s apartment on her way out. Lightfoot came out of her apartment and threatened to fight her for slamming the door, according to testimony from the accused.
About 2:30 a.m., Lightfoot and the accused exchanged a string of profanity-laced text messages, arguing about the clothes they wanted back and threatening more violence, the accused said. The accused said she did not want to fight then and that fighting in the morning would be better.
But soon after the last text message was sent, Lightfoot arrived at the apartment of the accused, they fought, and the girl testified that she went inside and retrieved a kitchen knife.
“I stabbed her and I made the worst mistake of my life,” the accused said. “I wish I had been thinking clearly at the time. I pulled it out instantly and tried to stop her from running.”
The accused said she ran back into her apartment and got a blanket and some towels out of the dryer, and then ran back outside and used a towel to try and stop Lightfoot’s neck from bleeding.
“I didn’t even tell my mother,” the accused said. “I was just thinking about helping her.”
Moments later, the mother of the accused ran outside.
“I was over there with my momma,” the accused said. “She was saying; ‘Come on Nylah, come on Nylah.’ The last thing I heard her say was I’m sorry and then she started crying. I grabbed Nylah’s blanket and I ran behind our apartment complex and sat on some stairs. I was scared. My mom was just texting me. She texted me about 4 and told me Nylah was dead. All I could do was cry.”
The accused told the jury she thought about harming herself but her mother texted her and talked her out of it. Her mother used text messages to encourage her to surrender to the police. The girl told her father where she was. The father came and then took the accused to the police department.
The knife was left on the balcony of a vacant apartment, according to the testimony of the accused. Later, the accused led officers to where she had left the knife.
“We had plans you know,” the accused told the jury. “We were supposed to go to Memphis to get my cousins. We had plans for my birthday and everything. We had just bought matching outfits.”
The accused told the jury that she regretted her actions and apologized for the pain she caused Lightfoot’s family and for causing the suffering of her own relatives.
But the state’s attorneys showed the jury evidence suggesting the accused had a tendency toward violence.
One of the text messages sent before the fight said the accused had threatened to kill Lightfoot. The accused testified that she did not know why she sent the message threatening to kill Lightfoot and that she did not know why she stabbed Lightfoot in the neck.
Jim Hudson, Tarrant County prosecutor, also presented evidence that the accused was placed on probation for punching a girl on a school bus in Arkansas.
“I was in fifth grade,” the accused said. “She made a racist comment to me. She shouldn’t have said what she said. We both got into trouble for that.”
Tensions between the two families triggered a report of a threat after the trial recessed Wednesday. Additional security has been requested for the Tarrant County Juvenile Courthouse on Thursday because of the report of a threat to a relative of the accused, according to a court official.
This story was originally published February 14, 2019 at 7:00 AM with the headline "‘The day was going so well,’ said Fort Worth girl, 14, accused of killing her friend."
