A Scarborough teenager has been charged with trying to kill a 20-year-old friend in the woods near the Scarborough Public Library last month.
The Cumberland County District Attorney’s Office has charged Lyndsey McLaughlin, 15, of Scarborough, with attempted murder and elevated aggravated assault, both Class A felonies, following an incident last month which sent McLaughlin and Barbara Kring, 20, also of Scarborough, to the hospital with stab wounds.
Both charges are serious and Barbara Kring’s mother, Denise Kring, said they are justified, “especially when (Barbara) is the one who got stabbed in the back and her throat slashed.”
McLaughlin is being charged as a minor, mainly because she has not been in any trouble before now, said Cumberland County District Attorney Stephanie Anderson.
McLaughlin and Kring were both rushed to the hospital on March 8 after police received a report of a double stabbing in the woods between Scarborough Middle School and the Scarborough Public Library.
The incident was first described by police as a double-suicide attempt, but Anderson said she has inconsistent information about what occurred that afternoon, after the pair entered the woods. She said there is some evidence pointing to a double-suicide attempt and other evidence that it was not.
“We don’t know what it was,” she said. “The case is still under investigation. We are not able to say at this time, ‘this is our theory about what happened.'”
According to Denise Kring, McLaughlin simply attacked Barbara Kring.
“There was no suicide pact,” Denise Kring said. “Barbara had no intention of committing suicide.”
Barbara Kring usually went to the library on Tuesday afternoons, to wait to be picked up by her mother.
That Tuesday, the pair went into the woods near the library to become “blood sisters,” Denise Kring said. That is a process where two friends make small cuts on their hands and touch the wounds together to mix their blood.
But at some point Barbara Kring turned her back on McLaughlin to pick up her bag, and was then stabbed in the back and throat.
McLaughlin then moved in front of Kring and said she would lie on top of Kring and “use her body as a blanket when she was dead,” Denise Kring said.
After being stabbed, Kring called the police on a cell phone. It did not work on the first attempt and had to try it a second time before it connected to 911 dispatchers, Denise Kring said. Shortly after police and ambulances arrived and located the pair near the walking path and removed them from the woods.
Denise Kring said her daughter, who has Asperger’s Syndrome, was not able to give police a complete account immediately following the incident because of her neck injury and the syndrome, which is characterized by behavioral and social impairments, according to the Yale University Child Study Center.
“She has told people since the beginning that she was a victim,” Denise Kring said.
Denise Kring also denied police reports that her daughter ingested or injected rat poison at the scene and said, “Barbara’s blood tests clearly show there was no rat poison” in her blood. Scarborough police have said they found a syringe and rat poison at the scene.
Barbara Kring and McLaughlin became friends about three years ago when Barbara Kring volunteered with the middle school drama program. Denise Kring said high school staff encouraged her daughter to mentor McLaughlin, but it was a relationship that Denise Kring did not feel comfortable with.
“It was always a feeling I had that they should not be friends,” she said.
Barbara Kring was released from the hospital on March 17 and is beginning to heal, although, Denise King said, “she still has wounds that are not healed.”
But the incident still affects Barbara, her mother said. Her daughter has stopped attending college and volunteering with the drama club partly because of fear of future repercussions and partly because of how people portray her in their comments.
“My child is afraid and she’s hurt,” she said.
But her daughter plans on returning to college in the fall, she said.
“She was the victim and she was not part of any suicide pact,” she said.
Portland attorney Maura Keaveney is representing McLaughlin and said the teen is recovering well. She declined to comment on the case, but said the investigation is ongoing and McLaughlin is cooperating with the both the District Attorney’s Office and the Scarborough Police Department.
McLaughlin was never arrested and has not been detained at Long Creek Youth Development Center, she said, and McLaughlin is abiding by the conditions of her release, including living at home with her family (which she has always done) and meeting with the school district to help develop a plan to reenter the school.
McLaughlin’s family declined to comment for this story.
If convicted of the charges, McLaughlin could be sent to the Long Creek Youth Correctional Facility until she is 21, placed on conditional release, essentially youth probation with a number of conditions, or a combination of a combination of both. But it is too early to tell what the sentence will be if she is convicted of the crimes.
“That’s hard to say right now because the matter is still under investigation,” Anderson said.
McLaughlin appeared in juvenile court last Thursday for an arraignment, but did not enter a plea. Her next court appearance is scheduled for April 25.
Scarborough rescue workers carry one of two females, who police believe attempted suicide, out of the woods near the Scarborough Library March 8.Send questions/comments to the editors.
