The 15-year-old Robert Poole Middle School student whom prosecutors accused of sparking an attack on a city bus passenger in December was sentenced yesterday to a juvenile jail until a judge releases her or she turns 21.
In arguing to send Nakita McDaniels to a secure residential treatment facility, Baltimore prosecutors revealed that the student body vice president had twice before led group assaults on lone girls, one of which ended with the victim stabbed and losing consciousness.
McDaniels was "the person who could have led them to staying on the bus -- she was the vice president of the student government," Circuit Judge David W. Young said. "She chose to lead her troops in another direction.
"There are many types of leaders," the judge added. "There are [leaders] for positive and good, and there are leaders who choose to use their leadership abilities to do wrong. In my heart, based on my belief and my experience, the next person who argues with her may be a homicide victim."
Also yesterday, Young dismissed cases against two of the original nine teens accused in the assault that started over an empty seat aboard a bus in Hampden, spilled out into the street and left Sarah Kreager, 26, with two broken bones around her left eye.
Young ordered another youth, who had admitted her role in the attack before the monthlong trial, to complete the community service he had assigned her. He also chastised the Department of Juvenile Services for not providing her with all of the services he ordered.
Young ordered four other students to complete 50 hours of community service, 30 days of community detention, and violence prevention and mental health treatment.
"Each of them need immediate, intensive treatment and services in order to get them to understand what they did," prosecutor Janet Hankin said. "What I do find continually disturbing in this case is the apparent lack of remorse. ... Even if you take a look at what they said -- that it was self-defense -- they still appear to think that under those circumstances, that what they did isn't wrong."
The hearings cap a long and divisive case fraught with allegations of racism. Students involved accused Kreager's longtime partner, Troy Ennis, of provoking the attack by using a racial slur against McDaniels and ordering Kreager to spit on her. Kreager and Ennis are white. The students are black.
