Benton: 'I didn't want to hurt anyone'

Ashley Benton took the stand in her own defense during her murder trial yesterday, testifying that she didn't mean to hurt anyone when she went with friends to a gang "rumble" at Chew Park last summer, but doing nothing to explain discrepancies in her statements to police. "It was a bad decision on my part," Benton, 17, said of buying the $8 knife she used to kill 14-year-old gang member Gabriel Granillo during the June 6, 2006, fight. "I didn't want to hurt anyone."

Benton testified that she wasn't a member of the Crazy Crew gang, but that she did hang out with some gang members. "I don't have any older brothers and I don't have a dad," KPRC reported Benton as saying. "They just kinda, in a way, made sure I was OK." As for the knife, Benton said she carried it to protect herself in a dangerous neighborhood: "It's not safe for a young girl walking by herself in that neighborhood," she said. (It's not clear exactly which neighborhood she was talking about, though the park and her home are both located in a pretty nice neighborhood just west of Montrose. And we assume the other knives Benton kept, including one she was disciplined for keeping in her backpack at school a few months before the fight, were for protection, too.) During the fight between members of Crazy Crew and MS-13, the gang to which Granillo belonged, Benton said she took the knife from her backpack, "closed my eyes and just stabbed [Granillo]" after he swung a bat at her twice. Benton's attorney, Rick DeToto, played Granillo's part in a demonstration for the jury, swinging an aluminum bat at Benton twice in slow-motion, and then Benton showed how she came across him with the knife. "I was freaked out," she said. "I had blood on my hands." After the fight, Benton and some friends ran to a nearby Mexican restaurant and a friend threw the knife into a bush. Later, Benton found the knife and washed Granillo's blood off it in her bathroom sink; the next day, she turned the knife over to police but told them it was a replica, not the actual knife she used in the stabbing.

In cross-examination, assistant DA Mia Magness asked Benton how she happened to land the lucky shot that put the knife right into Granillo's heart. "I wouldn't call it a lucky shot," Benton said. "You hit him right in the heart and buried the knife to the hilt, didn't you?" Magness asked. During her examination, Magness combed Benton's statement to police, asking her why she lied about several facts in the case, including where she was before the fight and what happened to the knife after it. "I don't know," was Benton's response.

Closing arguments are expected to be delivered today.