Inset: Yahkeim Lollar (YouTube/HEBC). Background: Jahara Malik (WTVJ).
A Florida teen on Monday admitted to stabbing her boyfriend to death just days before Christmas while they were “horseplaying” with a knife in a parking garage.
Jahara Malik, 18, pleaded guilty to manslaughter with a deadly weapon in the death of 17-year-old Yahkeim Lollar in Miami. She”s slated to be sentenced on April 13.
“I want the max,” Lollar’s mother Nathalie Jean told local NBC affiliate WTVJ. “That is what I want. A life for a life. She took my son’s life for no reason. She took my son’s life because he was honest with her that he didn’t want to be with her. And she not realizing her actions, her behavior and her entitlement is the reason why he didn’t want to be with her.”
According to an arrest affidavit obtained by Law&Crime, Miami police responded around 11 p.m. on Dec. 20, 2024, to a report of a stabbing in the parking garage at Lollar’s apartment complex in the 6100 block of Northwest Sixth Court. Paramedics rushed him to a hospital, where he died.
Per the affidavit, Malik, then 17, was set to go shopping with a friend on the day in question. Before she left, she was looking for the pepper spray she typically used for protection but could not find it, so she grabbed a knife instead, the affidavit said. After shopping, she went to meet with Lollar in the parking garage. The two were “horseplaying” and she somehow ended up stabbing him in the chest.
Jean never bought the horseplaying argument.
“Her whole defense is horseplaying. Who horseplays with a knife? You [learn] as a kid that you don’t play with sharp objects, right?” she told WTVJ after a bond hearing last year.
As Law&Crime previously reported, surveillance video showed Malik dropping the knife in the parking garage. A portion of Malik’s statement to police was redacted from the affidavit. A medical examiner deemed the death a homicide a few weeks after the stabbing.
Malik’s attorney noted that the teen stayed behind to render aid after the stabbing. Malik has not been arrested before this incident, the lawyer said. The attorney told CBS affiliate WFOR that the stabbing was not intentional.
The victim’s father, Darveed Lollar, said the killing didn’t have to happen.
“By somebody just playing, they took my boy’s life,” he told ABC affiliate WPLG. “That’s what they said. They [were] playing.”
The family has been frustrated that it took so long to put Malik behind bars, despite knowing she was the one responsible for the homicide.
“They couldn’t find something to charge her with the night of, when there was no question as to what happened or who [did] this, so I mean it’s, right now, it’s a little bittersweet,” Darveed Lollar told WTVJ.
