The mother of a teenage suspect in the Edgewood brawl was denied bond Thursday after being charged with beating a neighbor left paralyzed from the waist down.
“Witnesses said the defendant violently and repeatedly struck the victim in the head and body with a baseball bat,” prosecutor Alison Carver said, requesting that Natasha Fowlkes be held without bond.
Fowlkes, 44, has been charged with attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder. She remained in the Harford County Detention Center during a bond hearing, as Judge Mimi Cooper spoke to her through an audio connection.
As many as 50 people fought Sunday evening outside a house in the 1900 block of Eloise Lane. There, police say, 44-year-old homeowner Gregory Simmons was beaten with a baseball bat and stabbed in the back, leaving him partially paralyzed. A 17-year-old girl and 22-year-old woman also were injured.
Shamere Germany, Fowlkes? 16-year-old daughter, and three other teenage girls, also were being held without bond in connection with the melee.
At the bond hearing, Fowlkes? mother and Germany?s grandmother, Bennie Clayburne, disputed the police account.
Clayburne said Fowlkes and Germany had waded into the crowd to break up the fight, not participate in it, and tried to help Simmons.
“If it hadn?t been for us, that man might not only be paralyzed, he might be dead,” Clayburne said.
Police said the fight started when the group came to Simmons? house to confront a resident about her relationship with a neighbor.
But Clayburne said the feud began at Fowlkes? house Saturday when Simmons? daughter criticized another girl?s clothes.
Most of those involved in the fight had come from out of town for the Thanksgiving weekend, and Simmons brought from his house the weapons used to beat him two other residents, Clayburne said. The girls picked up the weapons as they fled the scene, running not from the police but from gunfire, Clayburne said.
Germany and the three other girls, ages 15 to 17, have been charged with attempted murder, assault and malicious destruction of property. They had been stopped by police while apparently fleeing from the fight in a car that had bats and knives in it, said Sgt. Christina Presberry, Harford County Sheriff?s Office spokeswoman.
Police have issued warrants for four others in connection with the brawl.
