Cold case solved: Woman arrested decades after 12-year-old girl killed in New Jersey

NEW JERSEY -- A woman has been arrested and charged in the 1992 fatal shooting of a 12-year-old girl in New Jersey.

The woman, now 40 and living in North Carolina, is facing a charge of aggravated manslaughter in the killing of Quiana Dees, officials announced Thursday.

Dees was discovered clinging to life in vacant wooded lot in Neptune Township on May 2, 1992.

The 7th-grader was last seen leaving her Asbury Park apartment the previous evening and was found with a gunshot wound to the head.

She was pronounced dead the next day.

"It's still hard to talk about and to even realize that she's still not here," the victim's brother Clifton Dees said. "She will never meet my daughter."

Monmouth County prosecutors and local law enforcement agencies have been investigating the case since her death more than 26 years ago.

Penny Dees never gave up hope that her daughter's killer would be caught. She held marches every year, demanding justice for her daughter.

The suspect was 13 years old at the time of the murder and therefore the charge has been issued as a juvenile delinquency complaint. This means her name and other details of the case will not be released.

She remains detained in North Carolina pending extradition back to New Jersey. If convicted, she faces a maximum of four years in prison.

"Whatever she gets, I'm satisfied," Penny Dees said. "If she gets no time, I'm satisfied because justice has been served for me just to know they finally caught the person."