GIRL, 9, ADMITS KILLING; SOBS OVER QUEENIE

The young Brooklyn girl who killed her 11-year-old best friend during a tug-of-war over a rubber ball sobbed yesterday as she apologized for stabbing her pal.

“I’m sorry,” the 9-year-old girl softly said through sniffles as she admitted to Brooklyn Family Court Judge Jane Pearl that she plunged a kitchen knife into Queen Washington’s chest on Memorial Day.

The girl, who yesterday pleaded guilty to juvenile manslaughter, faces a maximum 18 months in custody for the tragedy, which took place in her Wortman Street apartment in East New York.

Speaking in court for the first time about the events leading up to the stabbing, the girl yesterday said: “Me and Queenie were playing ball.”

Dressed in a pink shirt, bluejean skirt and white stockings with pink be rets in her hair, she told the judge, “I know the knife is dangerous . . . I jabbed it in her direc tion.”

When Pearl asked what happened next, the youngster replied, “It went into Queenie.”

But the girl, whose mother sat next to her in court, claimed she was not aware that her frustrated reaction to the struggle over a ball would end her friend’s life.

Defense lawyer Nicole Barnum said in court that her client chose to admit her guilt now rather than face going to trial.

Before she pleaded guilty, the judge warned the girl: “It’s not one month or two months, it’s 18 months. That’s a long time.”

Queen’s grandmother, Muriel Washington, was angry afterward.

“I already knew she did it anyway,” Washington said outside court. “It didn’t do anything for me.”

Washington said she didn’t like hearing the young girl say she simply “jabbed” the knife at Queen – insisting that “she knew what she was doing.”

“For her to do something like that means something’s really wrong with her,” Washington said, adding that the young girl needs to undergo massive psychotherapy and, for now, anyway, “shouldn’t be in society.”

Because she so young, 18 months is the longest time the girl could serve.

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