Women denies stabbing children
Published 12:00 am Friday, June 28, 2002
Adults are supposed to be the responsible ones.
That may not have been teh case on May 16 when a grandmother and uncle allegedly used a butcher knife and gun to break up a fight amongst teenage girls.
The grandmother, Roberta Whitt Sturdivant, and her granddaughter, Ramona Renee Walters, appeared in a preliminary hearing Wednesday in district court on assault first degree charges.
Sturdivant is accused of stabbing a 16-year-old girl in the head and chest during a fight involving her granddaughter at Rangedale Apartments last month. Sturdivant said she was attempting to break up the fight, but did not strike the teenager with a butcher knife.
“I did not have a knife. Those kids are lying. Why would I do anything like that to other people’s children when I would not want them to do that to mine. I’m a Christian person…If I had a stick I might have used that to get them off of her, but a knife – no,” said Sturdivant, who talked to the Times-Journal by phone Thursday.
According to testimony in Wednesday’s preliminary hearing, Ramona Moore testified that the fight started when Walter’s uncle, Michael Sturdivant, struck one of the girls in the head with a gun several times. He then stomped the girl and knocked her teeth out with the gun, Moore testified.
“Ramona was just standing there looking, when her grandmother ran out of the house and hit me with the knife and ran back inside,” Moore testified.
One of the teen girls testified that she saw Sturdivant holding what she thought was a butcher knife or large knife used to clean fish.
“I saw blood on the knife and saw her wipe the blood on her
pants. Then she tucked the knife inside her pants,” the teenager told Judge Walker.
The stabbing victim showed photographs of her wounds in her head and on her chest to Judge Walker. She said she was taken to the emergency room that same day and received eight staples in her head as a result of the knife wounds.
When asked how the teenager could have received the stab wounds in her head and chest, Sturdivant replied, “The pictures were staged. She put flour or dough in her head to make it seem like she was injured. I did not have a knife and did not strike her with a knife. These kids are making this up, hoping they can get some money.”
Judge Walker found probable cause in Roberta Sturdivant’s case and bound it over to a grand jury for possible indictment. Because none of the witnesses testified that Walters, Sturdivant’s granddaughter, struck any of them, Walker found no probable cause in her case.
Michael Sturdivant was not present at Wednesday’s preliminary hearing. His court date is scheduled later this year. However, district attorney officials say Sturdivant has not been arrested for the assault first degree charge.
If that sounds strange. The story gets worse.
uncle of one of the girls struck another girl in the head and mouth with a gun.