Associated Press: Danielle Black wasn't shy about it: She told her peers she wanted her father hurt, maybe even dead.

So when Billy Lee Black was fatally stabbed in the alley behind their rented duplex on Halloween, it didn't take police long to question his 15-year-old daughter, who told friends her father had physically abused her.

Danielle, a smart but troubled sophomore at South Hagerstown High School, is charged as an adult with soliciting first-degree murder by asking a boy on her school bus to kill her father.

A judge was to decide Thursday whether to refer her to juvenile authorities or order an adult trial with the prospect of a life sentence. Danielle maintains she's innocent, said her lawyer, Mary M. Drawbaugh.

The boy Danielle first approached on the bus refused to get involved, police said, so she told him she would ask other friends, including one named Alec.

Alec Eger, police said, was a 20-year-old newcomer to Hagerstown whose dark charisma had impressed a crew of kids in the gritty West End of the city of 40,000, about 70 miles from Baltimore.

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