The Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA — A teenage girl has admitted in court that she set the house fire that killed her father, a police officer. But she said she only wanted to hurt herself.
Fourteen-year-old Brittany Talington had told police that she and her father had argued the night before the blaze last year.
She told a Family Court judge that she thought her father was at work when she set the fire. Actually, 32-year-old Tyrone Talington was asleep inside the North Philadelphia house when the blaze started about 4:30 in the morning of March 19th, 2006.
The judge yesterday ruled the teen delinquent on second-degree murder and arson charges and ordered her sent to a rehabilitative facility for juveniles in Virginia.
She can be supervised by the juvenile court system until she’s 21.