LANCASTER, Pa. – A 14-year-old girl who ran off with her boyfriend after he allegedly shot her parents to death did not know that he was going to kill them, her lawyer said Tuesday.
"Absolutely not," the attorney, Robert Beyer, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.
Beyer spoke out a day after prosecutors said Kara Borden had fled willingly with David Ludwig. He said Borden had no role in the shootings of her parents, Michael and Cathryn Borden, inside their Lititz home on Nov. 13.
"It's Ludwig's case, not hers," he said. "All she is, is a witness. And a victim to the extent that her parents were killed."
Beyer declined to discuss the case further.
On Monday, prosecutors announced that they would drop kidnapping charges against Ludwig after interviews with both Ludwig and Borden determined she had gone with him voluntarily. The case had initially been treated as an abduction.
Ludwig, 18, is being held without bail, awaiting a Dec. 16 preliminary hearing on murder charges.
He told detectives that the girl wanted to "get as far away as possible, get married, and start a new life," according to court documents. The two were caught in Indiana one day after the killings.
Ludwig said he went to the Borden home armed with several weapons and shot the parents after Michael Borden told him to stop seeing his daughter, prosecutors said.
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