Thank you for reading D.C. Witness.
Help us continue our mission into 2025 by donating to our end of year campaign.
By
D.C. Witness Staff
- March 14, 2019
Court
|
Daily Stories
|
Homicides
|
Suspects
|
During a murder trial on March 13, the defense suggested that officers from the Metropolitan Police Department didn’t thoroughly follow-up on other potential suspects while investigating the robbery, rape, and murder of a 34-year-old woman.
El Hadji Toure is charged with first-degree murder while armed, first-degree sexual abuse and robbery while armed, among other offenses, for his alleged role in the death of Corrina Mehiel in an apartment on the 600 block of 14th Street, NE in March of 2017. Surveillance footage shows a black man using Mehiel’s bank cards at an ATM.
According to a detective, a request for tips was released to the public. The detective said multiple tips came from callers who reported individuals that may have been involved in Mehiel’s murder. However, the detective said he didn’t follow-up with the tips because the callers reported white men and police were searching for a black man.
Apparently, police also received a tip from Mehiel’s family about a potential suspect who had a “thing” for Mehiel. According to the detective, the tip was briefly looked into but disregarded when they learned that the man was white.
The detective said his priority was finding the man seen on the footage.
“He was the most immediate person we found using stuff from her apartment,” the detective told the jury.
Another detective also said he received a tip about a man trespassing in the vacant apartment above Mehiel’s. However, the detective said police checked out the apartment and didn’t see anything unusual.
About a week after Mehiel was discovered, a card was taped to her apartment door with crime scene tape. The card suggested that Mehiel’s death was connected to “nanotechnology” and said Mehiel may have swallowed a microscopic device. The writing on the card instructed the police to conduct a thorough autopsy. The person who wrote the card later contacted the police.
“She came across as a person that had mental health issues,” the detective said. He said there was no evidence of nanotechnology being involved and that the police didn’t look into the writer’s whereabouts.
According to the defense, Toure is not responsible for Mehiel’s death. The defense told the jury about another sexual assault that occurred four miles from Mehiel’s apartment. They said the individual responsible for that rape may have been involved in Mehiel’s murder.
The prosecution claims Toure is responsible for binding, sexually assaulting and stabbing Mehiel to death as well as stealing her credit cards.
D.C. Witness reported earlier that Toure’s fingerprints were not found in the apartment.
The trial is scheduled to continue on March 14.