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Teen Killer Could Get 65 Years

Joseph Mark in Gaithersburg

A few years ago Shiva Dayani had dreamt of a medical career. If she did not get into a medical school, she wanted to go into nursing or physical therapy.

But in a few weeks, a jury will decide how many years the 17-year-old would serve in a prison. She could be sentenced from 65 years to 115 years for participating in a home raid that led to one fatal shooting and a stabbing in early January this year. Had she not pleaded guilty on June 22, she would have faced a trial -- and if she were found guilty, she would have faced a death sentence, legal sources here said.

Convicted as an adult, she will be sentenced in the third week of September.

Dayani admitted that she went on a violent spree with two friends because they wanted to get back $60 they had spent on what happened to be inferior cocaine. Along with her friends, she had also bought marijuana, heroin, and Ketamine -- a cat tranquilizer that was her favorite hallucinogenic.

She pleaded guilty to all the 15 charges against her, in the presence of the Montgomery circuit court judge, including attempted second-degree murder and armed robbery. But she also told the prosecutors that neither she nor her friends had ever planned to hurt or kill anybody.

Prosecutors said Dayani's co-defendants, Joshua Friedman and Chelsa Sommer, both 19, have agreed to plead guilty to the same charges.

The robbery ended with the death of Ali Rabonik, 18, from a shotgun blast that shattered his face.

According to the prosecutors said Dayani drove with her two friends to a house in a quiet part of Gaithesburg to rob the teenagers living there, to make up for the bad cocaine bought from that house. The owner of the house had moved out a few months earlier and his two sons, aged 18 and 22 invited the young people to have a party.

With Sommer waiting outside the home in the getaway car, Dayani and Friedman entered through the front door.

Dayani carried a hunting knife and silver duct tape in the pockets of her sweat shirt, a .32-caliber revolver in her sleeve, and Friedman hid a shotgun under his coat, the prosecutors said.

Dayani pointed the handgun at Jumail Numan, ordered him to give her cocaine and then taped his wrists and ankles with duct tape, the prosecutor say. When other teenagers started fighting with Friedman, and Numan broke free, Dayani plunged the five-inch knife into Numan's back and was about to stab him in his heart. Just then Ali Rabonik broke free of his constraints and jumped at her, prosecutors said.

During the struggle the gun discharged, hitting Rabonik in the face, even as Friedman was exclaiming that it was loaded, prosecutors added. Rabonik died shortly.

Next story: Sexual 'Purification' Ceremony Leads To Conviction of Self-Proclaimed Godman

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