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| Dorsey High School in Los Angeles |
Deputy District Attorney Elan S. Carr, who prosecuted the case, said Treauna Turner was convicted on Dec. 8, 2010 of the second-degree murder of 16-year-old Yolanda Kennard, a rising basketball star at Dorsey High School in Los Angeles.
Jurors, who deliberated for three and a half days, also found true the allegation that Turner personally used a deadly weapon, a knife, to commit the crime.
During the afternoon of April 15, 2009, Turner, a paraplegic, approached Kennard near the corner of Buckingham Road and Santa Rosalia Drive in Los Angeles.
Turner was accompanied by three other women including her mother, co-defendant Pamela Johnson. Kennard was in the company of several family members and a number of acquaintances.
When Turner reached Kennard, Turner drew a knife that she had secreted in her wheelchair and fatally stabbed Kennard in the chest. Kennard was pronounced dead less than an hour later.
On the morning of the murder, Turner had threatened to kill members of Kennard’s family. Evidence presented at trial revealed that Kennard’s mother and Turner were rivals over the affection of
the same man.
“Treauna Turner’s jealous rage grew over a period of days before the crime,” the prosecutor said. “On that fateful morning, she threatened to commit murder upon the Kennard family and, only a few hours later, she did exactly what she threatened to do, ending the promising life of an innocent girl who had done nothing to her.”
Co-defendant Johnson, the defendant’s mother, was acquitted of assaulting the victim’s mother in the minutes following the stabbing.
