Crime & Safety
Woman Pleads Not Guilty To Rolling Hills Estates Mall Stabbing
The accused woman was previously arrested for the stabbing death of a 66-year-old woman but was released five days later in 2018.
ROLLING HILLS ESTATES, CA — A woman who sued the county after being arrested and then released in connection with the stabbing death of a woman in a parking garage at a Rolling Hills Estates mall — but who was subsequently re-arrested more than five years later — pleaded not guilty Monday to murder and robbery charges.
Cherie Lynnette Townsend, now 45, was charged Aug. 16 with one count each of murder and second-degree robbery involving the May 3, 2018, killing of Susan Leeds, 66, of Rancho Palos Verdes.
The criminal complaint alleges that Townsend personally used a knife during the commission of the crime.
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Leeds was attacked at about 12:15 p.m. that day in the parking garage of the Promenade on the Peninsula in the 500 block of Deep Valley Drive.
Leeds was found inside her white 2016 Mercedes-Benz SUV parked on the first floor of the Promenade's parking garage, with her throat cut and several stab wounds to the chest.
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Townsend was initially arrested in May 2018 in connection with Leeds' killing, then released from custody five days later after prosecutors asked law enforcement to conduct further investigation into the crime.
After Townsend's arrest in 2018, then-Sheriff Jim McDonnell said Townsend's vehicle — a gold 2008 Chevrolet Malibu — had been parked on the same floor. He noted then that there was still a "tremendous amount of investigative work" to be done.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court in November 2018, Townsend sued Los Angeles County, McDonnell and the then-mayors of Rolling Hills Estates and Rancho Palos Verdes, alleging false imprisonment, defamation, emotional distress, negligence and civil rights violations.
"Our client fully intends to try and repair the damage done to her and her family by being wrongly accused of murder by Sheriff McDonnell and send a message to the sheriff's department that racial profiling is illegal and must be stopped," Nazareth Haysbert, Townsend's attorney, said then.
In a statement released after Townsend filed a multimillion-dollar damages claim in October 2018, the sheriff's department called it a "very complex, yet active investigation."
Investigators are still receiving tips from the public and are diligently following up on each and every lead. With the lack of eyewitnesses in this case, the physical and forensic evidence collected is continually re- evaluated. Additionally, investigators are coordinating their efforts in the furtherance of this investigation with the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office Major Crimes Unit," the sheriff's department said then.
Townsend was re-arrested Aug. 17 by the Sheriff's Department's Fugitive Unit and has remained behind bars since then, jail records show.
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