Lesley Luna Pantaleon capital murder trial: Three teen girls appear in court as details are heard how they allegedly killed a 17 year old teen. Defendants identified as Ta’Niya Merriweather, Erin Taylor and Tyeshia Whisenant.
A courtroom in Alabama has heard how a a trio of teen girls ‘savagely’ beat and stabbed 17-year-old girl, Lesley Luna Pantaleon and dumped her in a creek to drown over the summer and there after going to a McDonald’s where they ordered smoothies according to reports.
The recently launched capital murder trial of three 16-year-old Montgomery, Alabama, girls — Ta’Niya Merriweather, Erin Taylor and their apparent ringleader, Tyeshia Whisenant beginning on Monday revealed the details of a summer murder that has since shocked locals.
It all started, the courtroom was told when Pantaleon’s gun went missing this spring. She allegedly ‘put a hit’ on the home where the gun had ended up the Montgomery Advertiser reports.
When Lesley Pantaleon arrived at the house to retrieve the firearm on June 24 — the last day she was seen and the day she was allegedly murdered — she got into an altercation with Whisenant. After that, she piled into her 2006 Blue Chevy Trailblazer with the three defendants as well as a juvenile boy who remained nameless. Taylor was in the driver’s seat. Little did Pantaleon know, the group were driving to her doom.
Taylor pulled the car over in a wooded area and the three Alabama girls now accused of murder beat Lesley Pantaleon with a metal pole taken from a gate as well as stabbing her. Then they left her there for dead.
‘needed to be taken care of.’
After they returned to Whisenant’s home, they allegedly woke up another girl who was there and confessed what they had done. The group were compelled to return to the crime scene where they had come to bore witness to Lesley Pantaleon’s murdered body amid the Alabama woods.
Except that her toes were still moving. Whisetnant told the crew that Pantaleon ‘needed to be taken care of.’ So they put her dying body in the car and drove to a creek, where they dumped her in, along with the metal pole. Satisfied that the girl was ‘finally dead’ the trio went to a McDonald’s – oblivious as to what they had all just committed.
It wasn’t until July 4 that Pantaleon’s body was finally found in a nearby lake.
According to the Montgomery Advertiser, some of Lesley Pantaleon’s last words before the Alabama teens murdered her were: ‘Just take me home, you can have my truck.’
Do capital murder charges hold?
But according to lawyers representing Merriweather, Taylor and Whisenaut, robbery was not a motive in the alleged slaying; therefore the girls cannot be charged with capital murder.
Under Alabama law, a capital murder occurs when an individual commits a homicide while in the process of committing another felony, such as robbery, rape or kidnapping.
According to People magazine, Alabama cops were able to connect the three 16 year olds to Lesley Pantaleon’s alleged murder through her cell phone records.
Impossible to determine how the victim actually died
After allegedly murdering Lesley Pantaleon, the three teens are believed to have taken off with her cell phone and her car.
The three suspects are all being tried as adults.
They allegedly smashed her body and skull so badly that, as the courtroom heard this week, it was impossible to determine what actually killed her.
A GoFundMe page was established in July to raise funds for Lesley’s funeral, with $1,965 raised before the fundraiser was disbanded.
