Cheerleader's friends charged

By RHONDA COOK

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Two young adults and a teenager have been charged with helping a friend steal a cash box containing $147 from two young girls who were trying to raise money to help their father’s struggling business.

Sgt. Dana Pierce of the Cobb County Police Department said Katie Leathers and Alexa Michalski, both 18, and a 16-year-old girl, all of Marietta, were charged Friday with being parties to a robbery. All three were booked into Cobb County’s jail.

Michalski was released on $15,000 bond while Leathers was still in custody midday Saturday. Police did not release the name of the teenager, who was charged as a juvenile. They also did not say whether she had been released.

Telephone numbers for the parents of the three could not be located.

Earlier in the month, 17-year-old Chelsea Alexa Steele, who was a Sprayberry High School cheerleader, was arrested on charges of snatching the cash box from the younger girls’ pool-side stand on July 3, and then getting into a waiting Ford Taurus that drove away.

Joe Greene — father of Sophie, 9, and Sidney, 11 — said his daughters and two of their friends, one of them in a wheelchair, had set up a stand at the pool in the St. Charles subdivision in east Cobb County. They hoped to raise enough money selling patriotic caps and T-shirts to have spending money for the summer and to help his business, JAG Designs.

“They were so excited about this,” Greene said, adding that it was Sidney’s idea to offer caps for $10 and T-shirts for $12.

The sisters told police that Steele acted as if she wanted to buy something and held out $20. But when one of the girls reached for the money, Steele snatched it back, grabbed the cash box and ran.

Greene said one of Steele’s friends was holding open the gate to the pool area so she could reach the waiting car faster. Steele, the friend at the gate and two others in the idling car sped away with the father chasing them.

Steele was arrested July 4 and held in jail for four days before she was released on $5,000 bond. She has pleaded not guilty to the robbery charge.

Pierce said the other three were arrested because they lied to investigators about what happened.

“The stories changed and people were not being forthcoming,” Pierce said.

Greene learned from other teens at the pool that Steele was a cheerleader. Moments earlier, he had heard the friend holding the gate call her by her first name.

Greene said he tracked down Steele by looking up the cheerleaders on the Sprayberry High School Web site and then using her full name to find her on Facebook.com.

“At that time, I was willing to drop the charges,” Greene said. “I didn’t think it would go that far. But Chelsea said she didn’t even know the other three girls. She wasn’t cooperating with authorities. I said, ‘I want all four girls held responsible.’

“If they had ’fessed up ... it wouldn’t go this far. I want them punished.”