A jury began deliberations Wednesday for a Gary woman accused of allegedly beating three teen girls at a bus stop near Theodore Roosevelt College and Career Academy in March 2019.
April Howse, now 39, was charged with three counts of battery. She pleaded not guilty.
A charging affidavit alleged Howse jumped in after three girls, all 13, got into a fight with her two daughters and their cousin. She allegedly kicked, stomped, punched, or pulled their hair. All three girls’ mothers said their daughters told them Howse only stopped fighting after her boyfriend, who was never identified, fired warning shots in the air, according to court documents.
A cellphone video police got from a school security officer — taken from a distance — showed three fights.
In closing arguments, Deputy Prosecutor Taylor Ward said all three girls recognized Howse, since they were all friends with her daughters at some point.
Defense lawyer John Cantrell said another person, Denice Knight, 15 or 16 at the time, came forward and testified during the trial that she was actually the one who fought the girls. Knight said she jumped in to defend her friend, who like her, was pregnant at the time. The cellphone video was taken far enough away that it couldn’t definitively prove it was Howse, he said. Investigators didn’t track down eyewitnesses and only interviewed the girls’ moms, not each teen separately.
Ward dismissed Knight as a “liar” and acknowledged “poor police work”, but said the video showed what Howse allegedly did. The girls didn’t know who Knight was, she said. She only knew Howse’s daughters.
“All signs point to April,” Ward said.
The girls claimed they got off at the wrong stop and one was going to get her hair done, Cantrell said. That was a “lie.” The police compounded the problem with their investigation. There were no outside witnesses verifying what happened, he said. The girls had to get their story straight and had an interest in lying so they wouldn’t be suspended or expelled from school, he said.
Cantrell also disputed that anyone fired shots.
The historic Black high school was officially closed in 2020.
mcolias@post-trib.com