Police: Teen Troy Westberry confessed to fatal stabbing of 13-year-old

The 16-year-old suspect accused of fatally stabbing a 13-year-old runaway 23 times bragged to a friend about the killing, a DeKalb County police detective testified Tuesday.

The witness said he saw suspect Troy Westberry walk into the woods with Marquis Overstreet behind his house in unincorporated Stone Mountain. Westberry emerged soon after, alone, with a large cut on his arm, according to the witness. He asked him what had happened to Overstreet.

"He's in the woods, bleeding," Westberry told his friend, according to Det. Bruce Brueggeman. "His eyes are wide open. I just killed him."

Marquis Overstreet

The witness came forward six days after seeing a television report about the July 4 slaying. Police took out a warrant on Westberry who, like Overstreet, attended DeKalb Alteative School.

Brueggeman said two knives and a gun were hidden inside a guitar case in the 16-year-old's room, along with a watch and bracelet belonging to Overstreet. Westberry's walls were festooned with pentagrams, the detective said, and a mummified squirrel or opossum was found under his bed.

Westberry told police he had offered to sell Overstreet some cigarettes in the woods off Biffle Downs Road. The 13-year-old pulled a  gun on the suspect, who said he wrestled it away from Overstreet. The 23 stab wounds, mostly to the chest, were produced by a knife belonging to the victim, Westberry said. Overstreet also was shot two times.

"Our defense is self-defense," Westberry's attoey, Gina Beard, said at Tuesday's probable cause hearing.

Brueggeman said ballistics tests aren't completed and Westberry's version can't be corroborated.

Overstreet's mother, Keisha Langhoe, attended the hearing.

"At first, I was nervous when I saw [Westberry]," she told the Atlanta Joual-Constitution. "But then I looked at him and I saw a lost kid."

Westberry was bound over to DeKalb Superior Court, where he'll be tried for murder.