Naima Liggon, inset, was stabbed over dipping sauce outside a McDonald’s in Washington, D.C. (Screenshots from local CBS affiliate WUSA)
A 16-year-old will spend five years in juvenile detention for stabbing her friend to death in a fight over sweet-and-sour sauce.
Naima Liggon, also 16, was killed in August after a confrontation among friends at a Washington, D.C., McDonald’s turned violent. As Law&Crime previously reported, officers responded to a report of a girl seeking treatment for stab wounds at a hospital, where the victim eventually succumbed to her injuries.
The defendant, who has not been publicly named, was originally charged with murder. She took a plea deal for manslaughter in December.
Now, she has been sentenced to five years in juvenile detention — the maximum sentence available, local ABC affiliate WJLA reported. She will be released when she turns 21.
Surveillance footage played at the hearing showed three girls exiting a vehicle where a fistfight took place, WJLA reported. Naima Liggon, who had reportedly stepped in to break up the fight, was stabbed in her stomach and then her heart. The defendant reportedly admitted during a police interview that the violence was sparked by a fight over the popular condiment.
In handing down the sentence, the judge said the entire incident was disturbing, and she couldn’t wrap her mind around it.
“This was really over sweet-and-sour sauce?” Judge Andrea Hertzfeld said, according to WJLA. “It’s very hard to make sense of.”
Liggon’s mother said that her daughter was killed by someone she had known since grade school.
“I still don’t understand how someone who called herself a friend, [could] do something so heinous,” Joy Liggon said during Wednesday’s sentencing hearing, according to a report from The Washington Post.
Joy Liggon said that she wanted federal prosecutors to charge the teen as an adult, the Washington Post reported.
“Five years is not enough, but at least it is the maximum. I hope she is rehabilitated by then,” Joy Liggon also said.
The victim’s father, Wylace Liggon, told the Washington Post that the sentence was not justice, but “it’s a form of justice.”
The defendant teen’s lawyer had argued that she was acting in self-defense. In court on Wednesday, the teen reportedly apologized to the family.
Jason Kandel contributed to this report.
