Two teenage sisters joined others in delivering a crippling attack on an Edgewood man during a brawl, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Joel Muneses, an assistant state?s attorney in Harford, said 15-year-old Layelle “Bobo” Reid and her 16-year-old sister, Tommyrre, known as “Mimi,” took part in the Thanksgiving weekend assault on 45-year-old Gregory Simmons and his family outside his Eloise Lane home.
In his opening statement, Muneses described the sisters as members of an Edgewood gang, the Lady Dups.
But defense attorneys Christopher Luber and David Henninger called the fight a “family feud,” egged on by the girls? mother. It escalated, he said, when both families brought in older relatives and friends who joined the fight. “The state wants to ratchet it up as some kind of gang activity, but it was nothing but a neighborhood dispute,” Luber said.
Both sisters have been charged with first- and second-degree attempted murder, assault, conspiracy and gang association.
Spurred on by their mother, Celestina “Sweetie” Huff, the girls were taken to Simmons? house Nov. 25 to fight with his daughters, one of whom had angered another member of the Lady Dups, Muneses said.
After fighting two of Simmons? nieces visiting from Philadelphia, Huff dragged them away, then brought back three cars full of friends, relatives and weapons for a rematch, Muneses said.
“When Mr. Simmons tried to get his daughters back into his house for their safety, they beat him and beat him and beat him,” he said. “They dragged him out onto the ground and beat him some more, and as he was down on the ground, he was stabbed twice in the back.”
Five others have been charged in the melee in which as many as 50 people fought, police say.
Simmons? wife, Shari, testified that the sisters? older brother, Otis, and several of his friends attacked her husband at the front step, while the Reid sisters kicked and punched him.
