Hiccup Girl Murder Case: Cops Say Jennifer Mee Lured Victim To Robbery After Meeting Him Online

Jennifer Anne Mee, better known as “Hiccup Girl,” garnered international attention three years when the then 15-year-old experienced a baffling bout of hiccups that wouldn’t quit for five weeks. The Hiccup Girl, now 19, is facing a challenge that even the miracles of medicine can’t wash away: a charge of first-degree felony murder.

Mee and the two men involved, Lamont Newton, 22, and Laron Raiford, 20, are being held without bail, and after admitted to luring Wal-Mart employee Shannon Griffin, 22, to an empty home to rob him, police in St. Petersberg say. After a struggle with the suspects, Griffin was shot three times in the chest and once on the shoulder with a .38-caliber revolver and was reportedly pronounced dead at the scene.

Cops don’t know who pulled the trigger, but under Florida’s felony murder statute, anyone who commits a felony in which someone is killed can be charged with murder. And investigators have learned that Shannon and Jennifer first crossed paths after meeting online. Described as a shy former high school football player, Griffin had recently earned his GED and had just under $60 in his wallet when he agreed to meet Jennifer for the first time, after a week of chatting, on Saturday night.

Jennifer’s mother, on the other hand, has a hard time believing that her daughter could be guilty of such a crime.

“They are making her out to be a cold blooded killer and that is simply not my daughter. She would help somebody before she would ever think of hurting them, she just got in the wrong crowd. In my heart, because I know Jennifer and I know how caring she is, I think that when this went down not only was she coerced but maybe threatened into doing it,” Rachel Robidoux told The MJ Morning Show in Tampa on Monday.

Robidoux says her daughter suffers from Tourette’s Syndrome and other emotional disorders that have left her with the mental capacity of a “12 or 13-year-old girl.”

“She knew the plan, she knew they were waiting for him, and she brought him to their waiting arms,” says says Maj. Mike Kovacsev of the St. Petersburg Police Department.

“Unfortunately what they thought would be a simple robbery ended a life and destroyed theirs.”