Girl, 11, Is Committed for Killing Baby

An 11-year-old girl who strangled the year-old daughter of her father’s girlfriend was ordered placed in a Riverside County psychiatric facility for juveniles on Friday.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge John Henning, who cited jealousy as the motive for the killing, ordered that the girl spend an unspecified period of time at the Olive Crest Treatment Center in Perris.

She will return to Henning’s court for an initial evaluation in six months and again in a year to help determine how long she should remain in the 10-bed facility, where she will be under 24-hour supervision.

“This is the youngest case I’ve ever heard of,” Henning said after the hearing, asking that the girl’s name be withheld. “We do have hope that with someone of this young age, we can turn her around.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Mitchel J. Harris, who prosecuted the case, agreed with the judge’s decision, noting that Henning had only limited options.

The girl, who appeared frightened and bewildered in the courtroom, could have been sent to a California Youth Authority facility until she becomes 25 years old. But such action would undoubtedly prove shortsighted, Henning said, since the girl would likely become more hardened rather than helped in such a facility.

Henning, in an interview after the hearing, emphasized that he also retains the authority to place the girl in the home of a relative or in a foster home once he determines that she as undergone successful treatment at Olive Crest.

According to authorities, the girl’s mother is a former prostitute and her father is her mother’s former pimp.

When the killing took place last August, the girl, who lived in the state of Washington with her mother, was visiting her father, who lived in an apartment near Griffith Park.

The girl, then 10, was left to baby-sit the infant while the father and his girlfriend were out until 2:30 a.m. When they returned, they found the baby dead in a bed and the girl still in the house.

She was charged with strangling the infant after an investigation that lasted several days.

Last November, the girl admitted that she killed the baby. Henning declared the crime second-degree murder and had her undergo a 90-day California Youth Authority diagnostic study before making his decision Friday.

“It appeared to me she was calling out for attention,” Henning said. “Unfortunately, this was the most disastrous way.”

Harris, predicting that the girl will need psychiatric treatment for far longer than a year, said, “She knows she did something wrong, but she didn’t deal with it like a normal person. She’s totally narcissistic.”

The girl’s attorney, Philip A. Toomey, said reports by nine psychiatrists cited several factors leading to the killing, including anger, jealousy and a fear of not being loved.

“It was the culmination of her not growing up in a normal healthy environment,” Toomey concluded.