Mother Sent Girl to Buy Drugs, Prosecutor Says

Prosecutors said Friday that a MacArthur Park neighborhood woman who claimed she killed her rebellious daughter during a heated argument about her use of cocaine was herself a “coke freak” and should not be granted bail.

However, Los Angeles Municipal Judge Glenette Blackwell set bail at $25,000 for Maureen Belle, 32, who pleaded not guilty to a murder charge Friday in the death of her daughter, Natasha Blacklock, 16.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Irvin S. Cohen, in arguing for no bail, said Belle had sent Blacklock out to buy cocaine Tuesday and then stabbed her with a butcher knife during an argument after Blacklock returned home without the drugs.

“She had her daughter going out to get some coke,” Cohen explained after the court session. “But the daughter came back with nothing, and there was anger.”

Relatives of Belle interviewed earlier this week said that Belle had given her daughter $50 to buy a bus pass and that the argument erupted when she returned home with the pass but without any change.

Cohen said bail should not be set for Belle, a part-time parking attendant at the Los Angeles Convention Center, so that she could not harm others, including her three remaining children--an 11-year-old daughter and sons age 10 and 12.

Belle’s lawyer, Charles Lloyd, countered that Belle had in the past tried to get help for her daughter and that she killed her accidentally.

A July 19 preliminary hearing date was set before Municipal Judge Xenophon F. Lang.