On April 27, 1995 when she was 14, she got into a fight with a 15-year-old stranger named Okia "Kia" Toomer. She pulled out a gun and shot him twice, according to court records. He died two hours later on the operating table at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She was tried as an adult, convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to eight years in the Correctional Institute for Women in Jessup, Maryland. She earned her G.E.D. while still in prison, and was released in 2000 after serving five years of her sentence.