Charges were approved Friday against an 18-year-old woman accused of fatally stabbing a 16-year-old girl during a melee that involved a large group of young people earlier this week in the Loop.

Egypt Otis faces a count of first-degree murder in the death of Heaven Taylor, who suffered multiple stab wounds during an apparent argument Tuesday night in the first block of West Van Buren Street, according to Cook County prosecutors and Chicago police.

Otis, of Oak Lawn, is expected to appear in court Saturday afternoon for a first appearance hearing on the charge.

The 18-year-old turned herself in to police Wednesday evening with the assistance of a West Side pastor. A man who worked at the same church as the pastor and helped facilitate the woman’s surrender told the Sun-Times she came to them for help after the incident.

“She was being attacked, and in all the videos that you see she was being attacked,” he said. “People were trying to portray it as if she was an aggressor, and she wasn’t. She was standing there until they came and attacked her, and it escalated.”

The man said there had been previous altercations with this group of girls, and that the arrested woman was acting in self-defense.

Officers were flagged down about 11:20 p.m. Tuesday while responding to a disturbance at a nearby Taco Bell and found Heaven Taylor lying in the street, suffering from stab wounds to her chest. Officers applied a chest seal bandage. She was taken to taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital for treatment but was pronounced dead early Wednesday.

The teen’s mother, Chalesia Clayton, said her daughter had just started her junior year at UCAN Academy on the South Side. The girl was also the mother of a 2-year-old boy.

“I just want her remembered as a good momma and a good auntie and a good daughter,” Clayton said. “This right here just hurts.”

Taylor was the second child in less than a year who Clayton lost to violence in Chicago.