Shaila Hernandez-Rivas is a teen killer from Nevada who was convicted of the murder of Chloe Edwards
According to court documents Shaila Hernandez-Rivas and Chloe Edwards attended the same school, North Valleys High School, when the two fourteen year old girls decided to fight. Soon after the fight started Shaila Hernandez-Rivas would pull out a knife and fatally stabbed Chloe Edwards
Shaila Hernandez-Rivas would be arrested, tried as an adult, plead guilty to murder and sentenced to fifty years in prison with no chance of parole for twenty years
Shaila Hernandez-Rivas Case
There was no leniency in the sentence for Shaila Hernandez-Rivas, a 15-year-old Reno girl who pleaded guilty as an adult to killing a classmate last year.
Both girls, North Valleys High School students, had agreed to meet and fight.
Shaila walked out of her house with a knife in her back pocket. Seconds into the fight she stabbed Chloe.
The defense argued that because of Shaila’s age, troubled background, depression and anxiety that she should be eligible for a 35 percent reduction in either a mandatory 50-year or life sentence.
Judge Kathleen Drakulich didn’t reduce Shaila’s sentence, instead sending her to prison for 50 years, with parole eligibility after 20 years.
Shaila will be 34 before she could be released. The court allowed the year she spent in juvenile detention since the Feb. 19, 2023, killing to count toward the sentence.
Deputy District Attorney Travis Lucia said videos of the fight showed Shaila wasn’t acting in self-defense when she fatally stabbed Chloe Edwards, 14.
Lucia said the defense’s claim that Shaila was just trying to defend herself wasn’t an accurate description of what the judge saw in the videos, which were not shown in court.
Chloe’s family made statements, addressing comments to Shaila.
Sister Alexis Lepp talked about the little sister she lost.
“I hate the fact that my photos are limited,” she said. “I only have so many pics of her when I should have my whole lifetime to be taking more with her.”
Lepp said when people ask her if she is doing OK after Chloe’s death, she just says yes.
“What else am I supposed to say to them? I’m not OK. The day you killed her, you killed all of us inside.”
Chloe’s mom Stephanie Speelman told Shaila she did not forgive her.
“I will never understand why you hated Chloe so much?”
Before reading the sentence, Drakulich told the room filled with friends and family of both teens that the facts in the case were never disputed.
“Why is that? Because we have video of what happened here. It’s astounding to this court that we have video of what happened here,” she said.
She implored those in the courtroom to act rather than record if something like this happened again.
“Please, don’t take video,” she said. “Stop it.”