02 March 2011

Okay, no racist jokes, now...


...however tempting a story about a poor dead girl named Kamisha might be (one with a sister named Schneiqua), as Alan Baker and Tim Stelloh have it in The New York Times:
The dispute between the two friends began over $20, money that had been given to buy baby formula and diapers, but that went for some other purpose. Days later, it became a heated public matter, splayed on the two young women’s Facebook pages.
At 5:44 p.m. on Sunday, one of them, Kamisha Richards, 22, wrote that this would be “the last time u will con me into giving u money.” Ten minutes later, the other, Kayla Henriques, 18, replied: “Dnt try to expose me mama but I’m not tha type to thug it ova facebook see u wen u get frm wrk.”
The war of words escalated over Facebook. In capital letters, at 8:52 p.m., Ms. Richards said that she would have the last laugh. Ms. Henriques replied within seconds: “We will see.”
They exchanged more messages, until about 9:30 p.m. on Sunday. About 24 hours after their last Facebook exchange, Ms. Richards was dead, killed by a kitchen knife to the chest delivered inside an apartment in East New York, Brooklyn; according to the police, the home of Ms. Henriques, Ms. Richards, and relatives of both women, including Ms. Henriques’s brother, who was dating Ms. Richards.
By about 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Ms. Henriques had been arrested, after witnesses helped point investigators in her direction, and the suspect “said things to implicate herself,” according to a law enforcement official. “It was witnessed by several people, in the apartment,” the official said.
In retrospect, some of the clues were spread like electronic bread crumbs for anyone to see.
Ms. Henriques was charged with second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon, said a spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney’s office. Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said the internet postings added pieces to investigators’ knowledge, though it was not immediately clear if those clues had been gleaned before Ms. Henriques’s arrest. “Like so many things these days, elements of this case emerged on Facebook,” Mr. Browne said.
To the victim’s relatives, it seemed unreal that the Facebook entries could foreshadow such violence. In fact, Ms. Richards did not consider the exchange she had with Ms. Henriques serious, said her sister, Schneiqua Henry, 20. “She didn’t pay it any mind,” Ms. Henry said. “She thought it was just another argument.”
Ms. Richards’s stepfather, Dunstan Henry, 42, said she was not someone who was easily provoked to fight. “She’s the type of person that would let you run your mouth off and she wouldn’t say nothing,” said Mr. Henry, who raised Ms. Richards since she was a newborn, after her biological father returned to Kingston, Jamaica.
Ms. Richards graduated from college in May, held two jobs and hoped to enter law school. She had been dating Ramel Henriques on and off for about seven years. Ms. Henry said she lived in the same complex as Ms. Henriques, the Cypress Hills Houses, but in a different apartment.
Ms. Henry said she believed her sister had given Ms. Henriques money in the past, though she said the two had never fought over the loans.
Mr. Henry said Ms. Richards had helped care for Ms. Henriques’s eleven-month-old son. “My daughter was taking care of Kayla,” he said. “She gave her $20 to be there for her like a big sister.”
Detectives are investigating whether Ms. Richards had claimed Ms. Henriques’s son as a dependent for tax purposes, and “whether that was an element in the dispute between the women,” the official said.
But that notion angered the victim’s brother, Donell Henry, 21, who said of Ms. Richards: “She didn’t use nobody as a tax write-off. When anyone needed anything in that house, she provided for them.”
What Ms. Henriques used the $20 for was not immediately clear. But those who knew Ms. Richards said that, when it became clear that the money had not been spent on milk and diapers, she asked for it back.
In one Facebook exchange, Ms. Richards used an acronym indicating she was laughing hard, and wrote, “girl bye I guess I’ll c u later just bring the money.”
Things quickly deteriorated when the two met on Monday night in an apartment of the complex where the women were living, officials said.
An argument started in the kitchen, and Ms. Henriques, who had her son with her, passed the child to a friend who was there, Ms. Henry said.
At one point, Ms. Richards opened the refrigerator door and saw the baby formula and poured some of it out, and said it was “half of what” Ms. Henriques owed her, the official said.
The argument then continued into one of the three bedrooms in the apartment, where Ms. Richards was mortally wounded.
“The next thing you know, she stabbed my sister in the heart,” Ms. Henry said.
Ms. Richards staggered out into the hallway, and someone tried to apply pressure to her wound, as others called 911. But she was declared dead on arrival at Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center, officials said.
On Tuesday, Ms. Richards’ relatives were still making funeral arrangements. The oldest of five siblings, she had graduated from John Jay College in May with a degree in criminal justice, said Yasmin Payne, 22, a longtime friend. Ms. Richards planned on attending Brooklyn Law School, and took the LSAT in December. She worked two jobs through college, friends and family members said, one as a security guard at JPMorgan Chase in Manhattan and the other as a housekeeper.
At her home in Jamaica, Queens, Ms. Richards’s mother, Nicole Colter-Henry, 39, said she had raised her family in the Cypress Hills Houses but moved because she was “tired of the projects. I wanted something better for them,” she said of her children as she stood surrounded by photos of her oldest daughter. “I’m never going to see my daughter. All over twenty dollars.”
No one from Ms. Henriques’s family could be reached for comment. But later Tuesday, a message appeared on Ms. Henriques’s Facebook page, even as she was in custody. It said: “I can’t be leave this happen I’m sorry I send my condolences to her family RiP kamisha.” As that message was added, many others that chronicled the women’s fight suddenly disappeared.
Rico says okay, one question: how is it that Mom's last name is Colter-Henry, the dead girl is named Richards, and her sister is named Henry? Just asking...

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