An Arizona women’s basketball recruit recovering from more than a dozen stab wounds, received visits from members of the Wildcats’ coaching staff yesterday.
Arizona head coach Joan Bonvicini and assistants Kellee Barney and Todd Holthaus made the trip to Thomason Hospital in El Paso, Texas, where guard Marie McGee, 17, and her 44-year-old mother, Anita, were listed in satisfactory and stable conditions, respectively, after a frightening set of events early Monday morning that ended with Marie suffering 15 stab wounds and her mother 20.
“”(Marie)’s improved, she’s in a private room now,”” Arizona head coach Joan Bonvicini said last night after visiting with the McGee’s at Thomason. “”She is definitely improving. I think it’s been real good for her and for me and I know for Kellee and Todd for us to be here.””
According to Officer Carlos Wooten, the public information officer for the Las Cruces Police Department, 16-year-old Carissa McGee, Marie’s sister, showed up at a neighbor’s house covered in blood around 2 a.m. Monday, where she told a male neighbor her family had been attacked.
The neighbor then called 911 and police arrived at the McGee home minutes later, finding the bleeding women in front of another neighboring Las Cruces, N.M., residence.
The officers then received word from the dispatcher that Carissa had remained at the residence of the neighbor who called 911. “”That’s when they made contact with her,”” Wooten said.
Though Carissa wasn’t arrested at the scene, she was detained, questioned and later arrested at the police station between 4 and 4:30 Monday afternoon on two counts of attempted first-degree murder, Wooten said.
“”With the evidence at the scene and what officers were told when they arrived at the scene from the mom and from Marie, there was enough evidence in totality to detain Carissa and subsequently arrest her,”” Wooten said.
An Associated Press article Monday cited a report from KOB-TV in Albuquerque, N.M., stating that the incident stemmed from the fact that Marie and her mother were ridiculing Carissa for being a lesbian, but Wooten denied that Carissa’s sexual orientation played a role.
“”There was a rumor going around that Carissa had come out of the closet and told her mom that she was a lesbian,”” he said. “”Nowhere in the investigation or anything else has it ever been brought up, and that is not a reason to commit that type of a crime.””
“”We don’t comment on people’s lifestyles,”” he added. “”That has nothing to do with anything.””
The KOB report may have stemmed from a part of the complaint that said Carissa was “”upset about her mom finding out that she had her girlfriend’s cell phone,”” Wooten said.
“”That doesn’t mean anything anyway,”” he said, “”because women often identify their female friends as ‘girlfriends’ and that doesn’t connotate a lesbian act.””
Police have yet to determine a motive. “”As far as why it happened and how it happened, its still under investigation,”” Wooten said. “”The reasons behind it, we don’t know that, we haven’t determined that yet.””
Carissa failed to appear before a Las Cruces judge yesterday and instead had her lawyer deny the allegations against her, according to the Las Cruces Sun-News.
