<p>The parents of an 8-year-old girl who was killed have dropped their lawsuit against the mobile home park where she was strangled.</p><p>The decision was made after Amy Yates' family came to believe that the 14-year-old neighbor imprisoned for killing her is innocent.</p><p>Tom Yates, the father of Amy Yates, said last week that the family decided to drop its lawsuit last month against the company that owns the Twin Oaks Mobile Home Park. The lawsuit, which was filed last May, sought damages of more than $1 million for failing to protect Amy.</p><p>Yates said he now believes that the real killer of his daughter was an 18-year-old boy who came forward in February and confessed to the crime. But authorities have discounted his confession saying DNA evidence didn't match, a certified psychiatrist declared him incompetent, and the boy made an inaccurate statement involving the cause of death.</p><p>Last year, the 14-year-old avoided trial by agreeing to be adjudicated for a delinquent act of murder. But Juvenile Court Judge Dan Camp recently vacated the boy's guilty adjudication and prosecutors said they planned to meet with the judge this week to schedule a hearing to determine if the boy should remain in a residential treatment facility.</p><p>Amy disappeared on the evening of April 26, 2004, while riding her bike to a friend's home at her Carroll County trailer park. She was found strangled hours later in a gully.</p><p>___</p><p>HASH(0x1cd9ba4)</p>
