The mother of murdered teen Aniah Blanchard has spoken out for the first time since her daughter's killer was convicted of murder and felony murder.
Ibraheem Yazeed was sentenced last week.
Angela Haley-Harris said it took her days to process the conviction because it wasn't what the family wanted. She said the trial was traumatic for her family, but she wanted to thank supporters.
"What I will say is you may not understand, and some people may not understand how we feel about the verdict, and some do," Haley-Harris said. "But we waited six and a half years to get justice for Aniah and when you have three counts of capital murder – and there's some things I can't say, I'm going to have to wait, they still don't want me to say a lot of things right now – when you have three counts of capital murder and you think you can count on people to get it right, you think you can count on them to get it right – because he was facing the death penalty or life without parole – of course, nothing will bring our beautiful Aniah back and those sentences weren't really even good enough, right?
"But I want to tell you our feelings and why we feel like we do right now," she continued. "I'm not going to go into the details of the trial, just know it was traumatic – and some of you that were there know – and then to get the verdict of felony murder and murder, and knowing that he is not going to get the death penalty and he's not going to get life without the possibility of parole. I know he's now going to get out, but my daughter deserved for him to get the maximum punishment. Maximum punishment. So, it felt like justice wasn't served."
Haley-Harris said she's not being ungrateful, but she wants to be honest. She said dealing with the sentence is like experiencing the death of her daughter all over again.
After the sentencing on May 7, Haley-Harris said she will say more, including things she has been holding in for six and a half years.
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