Eyewitness News reporter Marcus Solis has more from Yonkers on why the young girl's family is so angry.
The victim's family says the young girl was drugged and left to die. They believe the case should be tried in criminal court instead of family court.
Tempers flared Thursday afternoon, as one family demanded justice for the young girl, while others defend the 15-year-old suspect.
Last month, Dana Marie Regan died in her home. Her family says Regan was drugged by the boy because he wanted to have sex with her. Instead, the teen and his friends left the house. Later, the girl's grandmother saw Regan and assumed she was sleeping in a chair.
"She's sleeping so peacefully, I thought if I woke her up she wouldn't go back to sleep," grandmother Carol Brink said. "When I went to wake her up in the morning, she was ice cold."
Regan's family is angry that the 15-year-old has been charged as a juvenile.
"This is a courtroom that should be dealing with children who need to go to different homes, children that got in a brawl in the street," mother Cindi Brink said. "Not children, and I use that word lightly, young men, who have now taken a 12-year-old daughter away from my life."
Friends of the suspect say Regan took methodone pills willingly to get high and claim the boy, who has emotional problems, was trying to commit suicide.
"He knows what he did was wrong, and he feels sorry for it every day," friend Veronica Moreno said. "It wasn't his fault."
Officials will not comment on the charges, but the family describes them as criminally negligent homicide and drug charges. But as juvenile charges, they carry a sentence as small as 18 months.
