Attorney asks that teenage female be launched from grownup jail, in which she is awaiting placement at juvenile facility

The lawyer for a Bennington girl accused of beating up her father is inquiring the courtroom to release the teen from jail, expressing she’d been incited to sign up for the alleged assault and in any other case didn’t pose a threat of violence to other individuals.

The 15-year-old woman, who is being prosecuted as an adult, faces two felony rates: aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and aggravated assault with a weapon. She pleaded not responsible.

VTDigger typically does not title legal defendants younger than 18. The lady is named in courtroom files and has appeared in open hearings.

Because her arrest on May 26, the teen has been held devoid of bail at Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility, the state’s only women’s jail, because no juvenile detention facility has been out there. The court requested that the woman be placed in her individual mobile, nevertheless she is permitted to see and hear other people in detention.

The Division for Kids and People experienced been hoping to move her at the close of this 7 days to the Sununu Youth Companies Heart, a locked facility in Manchester, New Hampshire.

But at a Bennington hearing on Thursday afternoon, the prosecutor mentioned it would be about two weeks in advance of house opens up for her at the Sununu center — which has served as Vermont’s juvenile detention heart because its possess Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Centre in Essex closed in the slide of 2020.

“That facility will not be receiving Vermont youth right up until a quite superior-solutions-using Vermont youth is taken off,” reported Deputy State’s Legal professional Jared Bianchi. “The most modern update that I have, which is just just before this listening to, is that we are possibly hunting at a couple of weeks.”

Bianchi requested Outstanding Decide Cortland Corsones to hold holding the woman with no bail while her legal scenario is staying heard. Bianchi mentioned her risky and violent habits has escalated in the past yr — which includes in entrance of law enforcement officers — displaying that she is a threat to herself and to other folks.

Public defender Fred Bragdon, meanwhile, questioned that she be introduced back into the community by a custodian at the Department for Children and Households. The lawyer stated the teenager has a behavioral issue that desires to be addressed — and placing her “in a cage” at Chittenden Correctional is not the respond to.

“My shopper is in unquestionably the incorrect spot, and DCF is shirking its obligation,” he claimed. “The only issue that regulation enforcement can do for that, and I would argue the only issue that jail can do for that, is what we observed in that movie: Hands on, tie her down, tie her to a wall. … That’s not remedy for a 15-calendar year-previous. Is that what we have appear to?”

Bragdon was referring to a movie clip that was among the evidence the Bennington prosecutor introduced on Thursday. The security online video was recorded at the Shaftsbury point out police barracks, where by the lady was held immediately after the alleged assault on her father. The video confirmed the girl in a holding cell, screaming, kicking a wall and banging her head against it just after a few troopers positioned restraints on her.

Bianchi claimed point out officers have tried using other protective measures, such as placing the teenager at a area residential treatment method plan past calendar year. But he mentioned she ran away and bodily injured herself in the course of action, in advance of police identified her.

“Those protective actions have been exhausted,” he reported. “The point out is furious that the placement wherever she is appropriate now is a corrections facility, but that’s not actually the query in advance of the courtroom proper now.”

Law enforcement allege that the teenager seriously hurt her father very last thirty day period, when she regularly struck him on the head with a handgun in his driveway. Investigators reported the lady, her mother and two other juveniles went to the Glastenbury property, and following the mother and father got into an altercation, the group of 4 strike and kicked the father.

But on Thursday, defense legal professional Bragdon said police reviews demonstrate that beating up the girl’s father was basically the mother’s plan. He explained the Bennington lady, who was reportedly intoxicated at that time, “encourages her daughter to be part of her to go over … to assault (the father).”

“This was not my client’s plan,” Bragdon instructed the choose.

The girl’s mom has pleaded not guilty to a misdemeanor cost of domestic assault, which is punishable by up to 18 months in jail.

Court docket information clearly show that the girl’s mothers and fathers have been undergoing divorce proceedings since April.

As the father was staying assaulted, police explained the handgun discharged beside the head of a man who was striving to wrestle the weapon absent from her. The gentleman, previously described as a passerby, was identified in court as the girl’s brother.

Bragdon stated all witnesses but one particular think she didn’t deliberately fire the pistol. “Everyone else couches it as an accident,” he claimed. “When the gun goes off, a single of the witnesses says that my customer keeps indicating sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, keeps apologizing to (the brother).”

Choose Corsones claimed he expects to issue a selection on the girl’s detention status on Monday.

She faces two rates of aggravated assault, 1 a lot more major than the other the utmost penalty is 15 years in jail on a single charge, and five a long time on the other.

Did you know VTDigger is a nonprofit?

Our journalism is built possible by member donations. If you worth what we do, remember to contribute and help continue to keep this vital useful resource available to all.