Judge sets trial for mom pleading insanity in daughter’s stabbing death

By Dave Toplikar

Thursday, May 17, 2012 | 12:15 p.m.

A Las Vegas mother charged with stabbing her 6-year-old daughter to death with a pair of scissors last March will have her trial next year in Clark County District Court.

Judge Elissa Cadish has set the trial for Danielle Slaughter for 10 a.m. April 15, 2013, in the slaying death of her daughter, Kyla Franks.

Andrea Luem, Slaughter's public defender, told the judge she expected the case to take a week.

Slaughter, 27, who has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, told police that she sensed an “evil presence” in her daughter shortly before the stabbing on March 11.

Police said Slaughter began running in the street after the stabbing, shedding her clothes as she ran, and was eventually stopped by police after several people called 911. Police said she was barefoot and wasn’t wearing any clothes when they stopped her about two miles away from her home near Vegas Drive and Decatur Boulevard.

Police said that when they caught her, Slaughter said the blood on her hands was from the “Lamb of God.”

Officers said they took her to Valley Hospital, where she was examined. While she was at the hospital, police said, they received a 911 call from her boyfriend, who reported the girl was dead.

According to a police report, Slaughter told police that her daughter “was saying evil words to her and ‘laughing in an evil voice.’ Danielle stated she picked up scissors that were lying on the desk by the computer and ‘struck’ Kyla multiple times with them.”

Slaughter told detectives she had been taking a dietary aid for the previous four days, had been having trouble sleeping and had slept only one hour the previous night, the arrest report said.

Slaughter is charged with murder with a deadly weapon and is being held without bail in the Clark County Detention Center.