A 22-year-old woman was sentenced on Friday to six years in prison for fatally stabbing a Wilmington mother of three.
The stabbing occurred just before midnight on Oct. 29, 2020, after the victim, 24-year-old Tierra Herring stopped to watch two women involved in a fight near a stairwell at the Quaker Village apartments in Wilmington.
Alazhia Wilson, one of the people fighting, stabbed Herring in the chest, Deputy Attorney General Sean Lugg said at Friday’s sentencing hearing. Herring later died from an injury to her heart.
Wilson was originally arrested on murder charges but pleaded guilty to manslaughter charges. A weapons charge was dropped as part of the plea agreement.
Lugg said that although Wilson did not “intentionally” kill Herring, who was a bystander in the fight, the environment changed when she “introduced a knife into a fist fight.”
Herring’s family members held hands and cried as they addressed the judge at Friday’s hearing.
“You did not just take a child away from her mother, you took a mother away from her children,” said Herring’s mother, Thomasine Bland.
Herring left behind three children who were nine, six and five at the time she was killed.
Her final moments were captured on a video obtained by Delaware Online/The News Journal.
In the clip, Herring is seen wearing a white top and black pants and approaching the stairwell landing where Wilson and another woman are fighting. A group of people surround the scene, and some can be seen with their cellphone cameras up.
As the video closes in on the scuffle, one of the fighters pulls away, leaving the other woman in the corner.
Just as the video swings toward the fighter who pulled away, someone off-camera shouts a warning and that fighter begins to run out of the stairwell area. Soon, almost everyone else can be seen running out – including Herring, whose family said she had been stabbed by this point.
They said that she ran out of the apartments and collapsed near a utility pole near Fifth and Tatnall streets. Responding officers found a wounded Herring, who was taken to an area hospital where she died.
Sonia Augusthy, Wilson’s attorney, said Wilson was acting in “self-defense.”
“She was surrounded by angry people and had been physically attacked,” Augusthy said.
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Wilson also addressed the court ahead of her sentencing.
“I never meant this to happen,” she said. “I wish that night never happened.”
Wilson was arrested a few days after the stabbing after she rented a car in a friend’s name. According to prosecutors, at one point Wilson tried to “desecrate a memorial built for Tierra.”
After the sentencing, Herring’s family members gathered outside the courtroom and expressed their frustration over Wilson’s sentence.
They said that while Wilson still has a second chance at life, Herring will “never have that opportunity.”
Contact the reporter Yusra Asif at yqureshi@delawareonline.com.
