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(Mesquite-AP) -- A judge is deciding today whether a 16-year-old Utah girl should be tried as an adult in the butcher knife attack on two little girls outside a Mesquite casino in January.
Mesquite Justice of the Peace Ron Dodd is also expected to decide whether to bar T-V cameras from an upcoming preliminary hearing for Monique Maestas and her 19-year-old brother, Beau Maestas.
The teens are from Salt Lake City.
They face murder and attempted murder charges in the January 22nd attack in a trailer outside the Casa-Blanca hotel-casino in Mesquite.
Three-year-old Kristyanna Cowan was killed and her 10-year-old sister -- Brittney Bergeron -- had her spinal cord severed. She's paralyzed from the waist down.
Beau Maestas told police the attack came in retaliation for a drug deal rip-off involving the girls' mother -- Tamara Bergeron -- and her boyfriend, Robert Schmidt.
(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
