(CHICAGO) A relative of the teenage girl accused of shooting Endia Martin invoked the Fifth Amendment when she took the stand at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse Thursday night, the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting.
Vandetta Redwood said she worked on April 28, 2014, and came to her South Side home, where her cousin Donnell Flora would occasionally stop by to do laundry.
But when Flora’s attorney Joel Brodsky asked her where she went afterward that day, Redwood said, “I plead the Fifth Amendment.”
Redwood, who sat next to her lawyer, repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment when Brodsky and Assistant Cook County State’s Attorney Athena Farmakis pressed her for more details of her connection to the incident.
Flora, 27, is on trial for 14-year-old Endia’s murder and the attempted murder of another teen who was injured when Flora’s niece opened fire in the 900 block of West Garfield.
Flora’s niece, now 16, is currently awaiting trial in Juvenile Court.
Flora’s attorneys said he refused to give his niece a gun when she asked him for one to protect herself from the rivals she had been feuding with on social media.
He did, however, give the gun to Redwood, who accompanied the girl to the deadly fight, defense attorneys maintain.
Flora was at the scene, too, according to court testimony.
But his lawyers said Redwood was the adult relative who encouraged the girl by screaming “shoot the b—-.”
Mob action and obstruction of justice charges were filed against Redwood but eventually dismissed.
Before prosecutors rested their case Thursday, they presented an interrogation video in which a crying Flora changed his stories several times but admitted he gave the girl the gun but said “it wasn’t supposed to be loaded.”
Flora’s trial is expected to continue before Judge Thaddeus Wilson on Friday.
— Chicago Sun-Times
