Two girls who pleaded guilty to helping their male friend kill another teenager separately told police they expected it was only going to be a fight.
“Andre told me that somebody had pissed him off, or somebody that was messing with somebody else’s girl or something — it had to do with some type of chick — and that he was upset and that he needed some backup for a fight,” Jaslyn Smith, then 16, told police with her mother at her side on Oct. 19, 2021. “He told me it was just a fight.”
“I didn’t think he meant, like, actual murder,” Christie Parisien, then 17, told police in an interrogation room on Oct. 23, 2021. “I thought he meant fighting him, beating him up or something. Classic little high school boy-boy, ‘I mess with your girl, you mess with my girl’ type fight thing.”
It was not a fight. Lead defendant Andre Clements, who faces trial scheduled for next year, murdered Dwight “DJ” Grant, 18, with a sword for hooking up with his ex-girlfriend, authorities say.
Smith, now 19, and Parisien, now 20, were sentenced on Aug. 29 to 25 years in prison for second-degree murder, tampering with evidence, and conspiracy to commit murder.
In the footage, Smith told police that she held down Grant’s legs at Clements’ command.
“He hurt him,” she said.
Clements, who was 17 during the murder and is now 20, is charged with first-degree murder, tampering with evidence, and conspiracy to commit murder. He is scheduled for trial to begin Jan. 13.