Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - 15-Year-Old Girl Shot to Death, Teen Boy Charged with Cold-Blooded Murder

Episode Date: February 1, 2024

Fifteen-year-old Brianna Higgins was shot in cold blood at an apartment complex in Olathe, Kansas last month. A 17-year-old boy was taken into custody earlier this week and charged with her murder. Police have released few details about the killing and the boy's name is not being released because he is a juvenile. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy talks with retired NYPD cold case sergeant Joe Giacalone about the case in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show that delves into the biggest stories in crime.HOST:Angenette Levy: twitter.com/Angenette5CRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoAudio Editing - Brad MaybeGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@LawandCrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law & Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. A 15-year-old girl is shot to death in Kansas. Another teenager is in custody charged with her murder. We have the sad case of the death of Breonna Higgins. I'm Anjanette Levy. It's Thursday, and this is Crime Fix. Breonna Higgins' family described her as a beautifulvy. It's Thursday and this is Crime Fix. Breonna Higgins' family described her as a beautiful, bright soul, definitely the light of the room. On January

19th, police in Olathe, Kansas say a 17-year-old boy shot and killed Breonna. They've released few details about the circumstances surrounding the shooting. That 17-year-old boy was charged with second-degree murder earlier this week and taken into custody. But still, police have not released any further details about the shooting. In Kansas, a second-degree murder charge can be applied to a shooting that's intentional or one that's unintentional but occurred recklessly under the circumstances. That 17-year-old's name is not being released. Joe Giacalone is a retired cold case sergeant with the NYPD. Joe, what are your first thoughts about the murder of Breonna Higgins?

Well, when you see a case like this, I mean, we've been through several of these when I worked in the detective squad, too, where somebody gets shot at another location and the friends, probably in a panic, drive them over to the hospital and just kind of like dump people and then run. But one of the things that they forget about is that there's lots of surveillance videos outside of these emergency rooms that could pick up a license plate or, you know, a photo of somebody. And then the police can kind of work off that. But the hard part for the police in an investigation like this is that they need to find out where the crime scene is, right? Because that's where the evidence is going to be there, whether it's ballistics, blood and what have you. And plus, they get to find out exactly who was present at the time the actual incident occurs. The Kansas City Star is reporting that Brianna's aunt told them that Brianna was sleeping the night that this happened. And a couple of people came over,

woke her up and she left with them to go hang out. Apparently, they were at an apartment complex, and she gets shot somehow. And then she's taken to the hospital by people who are not paramedics, who are not law enforcement, although police are there and help bring her into the hospital. So you do have witnesses. You have witnesses who obviously know what happened. So you can see a lot of panic in it, especially when they drop people off at hospitals and run. I mean, it's really just about the panic part of it. But she's very young herself, right? And I don't know if it was intentionally left out, but there's lots of time frames that are missing from the report, from the paper.

So, for instance, the aunt says that she was sleeping. Well, what time was this? Was this in the morning, afternoon, at night? And she calls them acquaintances, right? So that means she knows who these kids were, which was probably the big first investigative lead that the police had. She probably knows them by a first name or the type of car that they drive. I'm assuming it's pretty much like a much smaller community in regards to that and kind of like a lot of people know one another. And then you kind of have an idea of where the, you know, the apartments are. And then you start doing your

canvases, knocking on doors to try to find out where these kids were involved with. I could tell you something from my experience, when you have something that happens in these apartment complexes, everybody knows what happened, right? And it's up to the police to knock on the right door and ask the right questions. There's going to be a lot of clues, as you mentioned, a lot of breadcrumbs leading back to what happened and who did this. You mentioned surveillance video earlier. They're going to have surveillance video of the people who take her to the hospital. If those people stuck around, you could possibly talk to them because there were police on scene. So they're able to get possibly information from them. You know, one thing that bothers me about this,

you know, I don't know if this was an accident. The police are not saying anything other than it was Brianna Higgins who was killed and a 17 year old boy is charged with the crime. 15 year olds and 17 year olds having access to guns. I mean, I don't know what the circumstances were surrounding this, but that's a really concerning part of part of this story. The fact that those kids and they were kids had access to the to a firearm. Right. And it's you know, it comes down to the point that, you know, is this like a was an accident where they did they have this gun that they shouldn't have had or they fooling around with it. Did the gun accidentally go off? I think that's what's going to be the the scenario that the defense attorney is going to come out with that.

This was not an intentional act that this was done either recklessly or super recklessly or criminally negligent or what have you. However, they decide to to try to spin this. But, you know, you're dealing with a situation where, you know, the very young age and these kids are going to these apartments and these homes, whatever, and the aunt is kind of there. You kind of question a lot of different aspects of this in regards to once they figured out what apartment it is, what complaints have they had in the past? Were there issues with this apartment before? Loud noises, drug sales, gang activity, or just, you know, kids being kids kind of thing. Maybe they just found the gun and discovered it. There's lots of questions, of course, that we don't know the answer to. All we do know is that this young girl is dead,

and it's now up to the police to piece this thing together. And from my experience, it's not as easy as it sounds. Even though you think you have all the pieces there, you need one of these witnesses to come forward and tell the police exactly what happened. And one of the ways that you might want to do that is once you find out who else was in charge, was at the location, they get charged with the case, too, which gets people to talk in regards to exactly what happened and who did what. I want to talk about the actual charge here in just a minute. But one thing I do want to touch on is the silence of the police. I mean, they've been very tight lipped about this and police are typically very tight lipped in these types of investigations. But in something like this, to me, at least,

it doesn't seem like they necessarily have to be. They have a suspect in custody. Couldn't they give out, Joe, just a little bit more information about the circumstances surrounding this or what they believe happened? Because you've got Breonna Higgins, this 15-year-old girl who sadly was killed. You have a 17-year-old boy in custody. The police say, this is our last update. No more updates. No more information. But couldn't they just give us a little bit more to know exactly what happened? Was this intentional? Was it something that

possibly was accidental? Well, here you go with it. And here's my take on this. The police made no mention that the fact that the public at large was in danger, right? They didn't do all that. So I think that speaks volumes. And the second part of your question, the police are reluctant to tell about exactly what's happening or where we call everything now transparency, but sometimes you don't want to come out with an information that tips people off. Because remember, even when you're dealing with adults, right? We've seen this now in many high profile cases where family members get involved and try to do things like tampering with evidence or try to help them escape. And when you're dealing with kids who are, you know, sometimes in troubled youth or mental health issues, you know, this could get even worse in

regarding to try to track people down in order to do this. So sometimes they say they make the arrest and we're not talking about it anymore. It could put other potential people at ease and they feel comfortable like, okay, they're not coming to me. I don't have to run or I don't have to hide anything or I don't have to do anything. And I think that might be part of the game plan here. I want to take a minute to tell you all about an exciting new channel we just started here at Law & Crime. It's Law & Crime Body Cam. This channel is devoted to authentic raw footage captured directly on police bodycams, which means you get to see what happens firsthand instead of hearing about it in court or from a

police report. Law and Crime Bodycam puts you right in the middle of the action of high-stakes situations like car chases, DUIs, arrests, and all of the other crazy situations police encounter daily. Check out the description of this video for a link to Bodycam and make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any new uploads. The second degree murder charge. I mean, this is not a first degree murder charge. It's second degree. And the Kansas statute says this can be an intentional act

or it can be unintentional with reckless actions surrounding the circumstances. So what's your feeling on that? A first degree murder to me is something that maybe is premeditated. They talk about malice aforethought or whatever, but this could be intentional, possibly maybe a crime of passion, something to that effect, or it could be unintentional and a reckless action. So what's your gut feeling telling you on that second degree murder charge the police filed against a 17 year old? Well, if they chose that statute specifically, remember, the police are, you know, go through the penal law and they add the charges that they think happened. Right. So what they're trying to tell us here is that this was yes, this could have been an accident. You know, it was done recklessly, but it really doesn't wasn't done in malice, so to speak, like a criminally negligent, which is something like is what we call a super reckless, which means like, you know, things are just so bizarre that we don't know what to do with this person. But there's a person dead. So we have to charge you with something. I mean, that's basically what you're dealing with in that respect, but you know,

by not going for a lesser charges like manslaughter and stuff like that means to tell me that they have evidence that would suggest that this case is far more along the lines of dealing with, you know, an intentional murder in that respect. Cause remember the DA, yeah, the DA can always,

the DA can always drop it. So you think it's possibly an intentional murder. That's what your gut is telling you. It certainly could sound like it, specifically by charging that, right? So if the police believed just from the information that they did in the preliminary investigation that this was a terrible accident, that this kid was fooling around and the gun went off, then you would have gone in with a manslaughter charge with that because there's no sense of even going for anything else because the district attorney, once they find out, they're going to drop the charges there down that far anyway. You know, you don't overcharge. You discharge what you think what it really is.

So let's talk about this being a 17-year-old. It's a 17- old. Does this 17 year old stay charged as a juvenile or does he get charged? Maybe do you see this getting upgraded possibly to him being charged as an adult being bound over to adult court or do you think it stays in juvenile court? Well, here's the problem with that, right? So it depends on what the local law has been changed to because under the criminal justice reforms that have happened all across our country, the definition of who and what makes somebody a juvenile have changed dramatically, right? So even in New York City now, it's over the age of that. And then the kid gets stuck in the family court system, so to speak, or the juvenile court, however they call it, which means that they end up with a lot less time and will be out in jail before you know it. And that's going to even cause even more problems for the family once they find that out. So it's unfortunate because each state has their own sets of rules

now about how this gets done. And it's tough to keep on top of each one of those changes. And obviously the most unfortunate thing is we have a 15-year-old girl, you know, hanging out in an apartment complex with friends and something happens and she's dead. I mean, it's just so senseless and needless and really terrible, Joe. It's every parent's worst nightmare, right? It's just, it's every, everybody who, you know, you send your kid out to go hang out with friends or family or this and that, this is something that you always worry about that something's going to go wrong. And, you know, you have to look at the circle of friends that she has and this and that. One thing that they didn't mention is that this kid had a prior record, right? They didn't mention

any of that too, which really doesn't mean anything, too, because a lot of places have scrubbed juvenile records and they can't talk about them. They can't even mention that. And that's another little problem that we have with juvenile crime in this country now is that everything has been basically covered over and everybody's running blind, so to speak, on that information. So it's going to be interesting to see how this plays out. Well, we'll keep an eye on it and see how it plays out. Joe, thank you so much. They're going to, friends and family of Breonna Higgins will be having a funeral for her this weekend. So thanks again for coming on. You're welcome. And that's it for Crime Fix on this Thursday, February 1st, 2024. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with us. We will

see you back here tomorrow night. Until then, have a great night. You can download Crime Fix on Apple, Spotify, Google, and wherever else you get your favorite podcasts and new episodes post each weeknight at 6 Eastern time on Law and Crime's YouTube channel. Daniel Camacho does our video editing. Our head of social media is Bobby Zoki. Our senior director of social media is Vanessa Bynes. Savannah Williamson is one of our producers. Diane Kay and Alyssa Fisher book our guests. And Brad Mabey is our audio editor.