NEED TO KNOW
- A Texas teenager who was arrested in connection with her young brother’s death is claiming she has been “falsely charged”
- Kara Walker was arrested five months after her boyfriend, 18-year-old Noah Stallings, was charged
- Both teenagers have been charged with causing injury to a child, not homicide
A teenager who was arrested last week and accused of having a hand in her 8-year-old brother’s torture and death has spoken out, claiming she had nothing to do with what happened to her sibling and that she’s been “falsely” accused.
The Harris County Sheriff’s Office announced last week that Kara Walker, 17, had been arrested and accused, alongside her boyfriend Noah Stallings, of torturing her 8-year-old brother Charles Walker to death this past February.
But in a new interview with KPRC 2 News in Houston, the teenager is placing the blame on her boyfriend, while her family is backing up her alibi.
“I’m being falsely charged. I wouldn’t do anything to harm my brother,” Kara told the local news station in an interview from the Harris County Jail, where she’s been held since her Aug. 27 arrest.
KPRC 2 News reported that Kara was “emotional” during the exclusive interview and claimed that she was shocked when police told her she was under arrest.
“They found a note in my phone that I didn’t write and because it was in my phone they’re saying that I wrote it,” Kara said, adding, “and they found text messages about me saying that I had made my brother stand in the corner even though I didn’t make him stand in the corner.”
Harris County Jail records reviewed by PEOPLE show Kara remains in custody on a $100,000 bond as of Wednesday. PEOPLE previously reported this week that the 17-year-old was not charged with homicide, but rather injury to a child.
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Stallings, her boyfriend, was charged with the same crime five months earlier. Stallings has since been released on a $1 million bond, county jail records show.
Kara’s little brother died on Feb. 15, five days after she and Stallings took him to the Baytown Methodist Hospital while he was unresponsive.
According to FOX 26, Stallings told police the 8-year-old boy was injured in a fall. However, hospital staff informed investigators that the boy’s injuries were consistent with abuse, while an autopsy later determined the boy died from blunt force trauma.
“They just compared it to a car accident. 70 to 80 mile an hour car crash with an unrestrained victim,” the boy’s mother, Cecil Walker, told KPRC 2 News this week.
The boy’s father, Christian West, told the outlet that their son’s death and the ensuing charge against their daughter has been like “a nightmare that we can’t wake up from.”
West told KPRC 2 News that he doesn’t believe that Kara, who is 5-foot-2 and roughly 100 pounds, could have been physically capable of causing the injuries her little brother sustained.
Court documents reviewed by KPRC 2 News, ABC 13, and KHOU 11 reportedly alleged the young boy had been “abused and tortured over several days,” during which he sustained injuries that led to his death — including blunt force trauma to the head.
If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.
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