VIDEO: 'Hiccup Girl' Breaks Silence From Jail: 'I'm Not Guilty Of Anything'
April 5 2011, Published 8:28 a.m. ET
Jennifer Mee, the teen who made headlines four years ago for her battle with hiccups, and is now behind bars at Florida’s Pinellas County Jail charged with 1st degree felony murder in a 2010 killing, told the Today Show Tuesday she's "not guilty of anything" in her first television interview since her arrest last year.
As RadarOnline.com previously reported, Mee was arrested October 24, 2010 along with with two men (Lamont Newton and Laron C. Raiford) in connection with the fatal shooting of Shannon Griffin, 22, during a botched robbery attempt in St. Petersburg, Florida. They have all pleaded not guilty to the charges.
"Jennifer Mee lured the victim to the address ... and Raiford and Newton robbed him at gunpoint and took miscellaneous items from his person ... all three suspects admitted to their involvement and were charged with 1st degree felony murder," police said following the arrests of Mee and the other two suspects.
Mee, 19, said that after she became well-known from the nationwide attention she received for her hiccupping, she started running with a bad crowd.
“I basically let it all go to my head and just started to do what I wanted to do ... I took the path of the devil, I really did. Instead of keeping my faith with the Lord, I let the devil overcome me,” Mee told NBC’s Amy Robach.
Mee said that she thinks about Griffin's premature passing each day.
Watch the video on RadarOnline.com
“I think, ‘What if that was me behind that barrel?’” a crying Mee told Robach. “That could have been my life taken. He was very young; he was only a couple years older than I was.
“I think about it every day, it eats me alive.”
Mee stopped short of saying she's responsible for the killing, as she told Robach, “I didn’t do nothing wrong. I’m not guilty of anything.”
Mee, who'd previously admitted to investigators she’d lured Griffin to his death, now claims she was coerced into taking the rap for the killing, saying she thought her youth and fame would get her off the hook.
"I don’t know. It’s hard. It’s hard to explain,” Mee said. “I made a mistake. I thought since I was ‘famous’... young, nothing would happen to me. But in all reality, it put me behind bars.”
“If you really believe her story, she’s really not guilty of anything except poor judgment of who she associated with,” her attorney John Trevena said.
Mee's hiccup problems landed her multiple appearances on The Today Show in 2007 , making her an 'overnight celebrity' of sorts. She did not hiccup once during the jailhouse interview Tuesday, though her attorney said he plans to use her previously-diagnosed case of Tourette’s syndrome as a defensive point as the case progresses.