A woman accused of helping to set the fire that killed her friend's two toddlers in 1990 was just an innocent teenager following the orders of an "angry, angry young woman," her lawyer told an Allegheny County jury on Friday.
Lachan Russell, now 30, of Braddock, was not part of Tequilla Fields' plans to set the family dog on fire and even tried to talk the older teenager out of it, defense attorney J. Kerrington Lewis said during opening arguments in Russell's double-homicide trial.
"It was like role reversal, a young kid telling the mother of these children to just forget it," Lewis said of the relationship between Russell, then 15, and Fields, who was 18 at the time.
Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Digiovanni told the jurors that Russell helped set fire to Fields' grandmother's dog, Fay Lou, on the porch of the family home on Apple Street in Lincoln-Lemington on July 11, 1990. Fields' son was allergic to the German shepherd-bloodhound mix.
Russell, who with Fields kept quiet about the fire until they were interviewed by Pittsburgh police cold case detectives J.R. Smith and Tim Rush, admitted handing to Fields the bottle of flammable liquid that Fields sprayed on the dog before throwing a lighted match at it, Digiovanni said.
When the dog ran inside, the rest of the house caught fire, killing Fields' children, Montelle Thornhill, 2, and Charita Thornhill, 3.
"She knew exactly what Tequilla Fields was going to do, and Tequilla Fields did exactly what she said she was going to do all day," Digiovanni said.
A jury in October convicted Fields, 34, of East Hills, of two counts of second-degree murder for the deaths. Common Pleas Judge Lawrence J. O'Toole, who also is presiding over Russell's trial, sentenced Fields to two consecutive life prison terms without the possibility of parole.
