A fight over a McDonald’s sauce packet in the District last weekend left one teenage girl dead, another charged with murder and a community grappling with the susceptibility of young people to get caught up in the city’s juvenile crime crisis — as either victim or perpetrator.
The D.C. Metropolitan Police Department said a 16-year-old girl from Waldorf, Maryland, faces murder charges in the stabbing death of Naima Liggon, a 16-year-old also from Waldorf. The girl had a knife when she was arrested Sunday just a block away from the killing, authorities said.
Police first learned of the incident around 2:10 a.m. Sunday when officers responded to a call at a hospital assessing Naima’s stab wounds. She later died from her injuries.
An MPD detective testified at the other girl’s arraignment Monday that the two came to the District together for a party with three other people.
The teens fought over sweet-and-sour sauce after leaving the McDonald’s on the corner of 14th and U streets Northwest toward the end of their night. They got out of their car to continue the fight. That was when Naima was stabbed twice — once in the abdomen and once in the chest, police said.
A defense attorney said the girl should be released to her parents because she was defending herself from Naima and another passenger who attacked her outside the car.
The D.C. judge ordered that the girl be kept behind bars. Surveillance video showed Naima being stabbed on the sidewalk and then while she tried to get back into the car. The teen’s next detention hearing is scheduled for Friday.
“The impact of this senseless loss has affected our family, our friends, and our community,” Joy Liggon, Naima’s mother, said in a statement. “Naima will never see her prom or her graduation. We will not get to see her graduate from college or get married or have kids.”
The disturbing case provides the latest evidence that teen girls are as willing as their male counterparts to use deadly force to settle disputes or commit violent offenses in the District.
Police said they arrested a 13-year-old girl last month in connection with a carjacking. The girl was accused of being part of a trio of juveniles who beat up a driver and stole a car in Northwest.
A week later, police said, they were on the lookout for two juvenile girls who carried out a shooting in Southeast.
Teen girls have also contributed to the scourge of robberies in the District this summer.
A 15-year-old from Suitland, Maryland, was arrested last month. Police said she robbed five people over three days. A 15-year-old girl who lives in Southeast was arrested on charges connected with the robberies of four people within four hours on Aug. 4.
D.C. residents have been shocked by the number of young offenders throughout the year, but the heinous actions of girls are striking a different chord.
“When we think of little girls, we don’t think of stabbing. We don’t think of being charged with murder. We don’t think of someone losing their life due to being stabbed,” Salim Adofo, an advisory neighborhood commissioner in Ward 8, told The Washington Times. “We don’t think of a little girl possibly being incarcerated for stabbing someone. Those are just things that just [don’t] come to mind.”
Why juvenile girls are committing violent crimes is unclear.
Asiyah Timimi runs the R.O.C.K. Now, an organization that works to reduce recidivism. She told The Times that she suspects a combination of drug use and romantic interests in boys who are breaking laws.
She said teen boys often introduce their girlfriends to crime by having them set up rivals or run other illicit errands.
Wendy Hamilton, a D.C. Public Schools employee and ANC commissioner in Ward 8, blames TV shows such as “The Real Housewives” and the “Bad Girls Club” for glamorizing cattiness and inspiring girls.
She said such attitudes can elevate minor tiffs on social media into real-life fights on campus.
Naima was slain in an area that will fall under a juvenile curfew effective Friday.
Police would have had the authority to detain Naima and the other teenage girl on sight because they were in one of the designated curfew zones past midnight.
Youths who are picked up by police will be taken to the juvenile facility in Northeast to wait for their parents or guardians.
Observers doubt the curfew would have prevented the deadly stabbing.
Mr. Adofo said the District doesn’t enforce the curfew already on the books. He said the most effective curfews come from parents — not cops — and struggling families need resources to provide for their children.
A 2003 Department of Justice study looked at the effectiveness of the District’s curfew in driving down the juvenile crime rate. Researchers concluded that the 1995 law was ineffective at reducing the total arrests of youths.
A joint report from nonprofit journalism outfit The Marshall Project and the Baltimore Banner published this year found that curfews don’t address youth crime problems because most of the violent offenses they commit are in the daytime.
Still, a change in police tactics can’t account for the deeper issues affecting the District’s youths, which Ms. Timimi said sprouted during COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns.
“What is going on in our society where children are just reacting and they don’t take life serious?” Ms. Timimi said. “We’re just losing so many people — so many children, so many youth — either to prison or death, as well as drugs. It is really, really a depressing generation.”
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.
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