BALTIMORE — When Jay'den Franklin-Williams rolled her wheelchair up to the witness stand in Baltimore Circuit Court last month, she later said, she hadn’t decided what she would say about the young man she previously accused of shooting her and the woman she told police had yelled out “Shoot.”
More than two years had gone by since a dispute from school devolved into a nighttime brawl where Williams was shot in the back. The bullet damaged her spine and, at age 13, she was partially paralyzed: unable to use her legs, but able to use her arms and hands.
She considers the defendants in the case, Antwan Newton, 22, and Lasheena Stewart, 39, her “brother” and “mother,” she told The Baltimore Sun after the trial. Stewart was like the neighborhood mom in East Baltimore Midway; Newton was a boy she took in years ago. Williams grew up with Stewart’s children and Newton, playing and bickering like siblings.
