Prosecution witnesses testified digital evidence and social media posts place a homicide defendant close to the crime scene in DC Superior Court Judge Michael Ryan’s courtroom on April 17.
Bernard Eddy, 25, is charged with premeditated first-degree murder while armed, possession of a firearm during a crime of violence, and carrying a pistol without a license for his alleged involvement in the shooting of 16-year-old Steffen Brathwaite on Sept. 10, 2019 on the 3000 block of 24th Place, SE in what may have been a revenge killing for a friend’s murder.
The prosecution called on a witness from the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD)’s digital evidence unit, who testified that she completed a data extraction report from the defendant’s phone.
The cell phone was registered under an iCloud account called “lil40glock” which the prosecutors claimed belongs to Eddy.
Photos from the device showed images taken at 5:26 p. m. on the day of the incident, which depicted an individual identified as Eddy and an unknown individual posing with firearms in their waistbands in what appears to be the crime scene. According to court documents, Brathwaite was shot and killed at 12:12 a.m.
Julie Swaney, Eddy’s defense attorney, told the jury that this extraction data doesn’t specifically address how a photo ended up on the phone, insinuating that these images could have been screenshots from another day or sent by another person.
Prosecutors also called on a witness with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, who was tasked with tracking the latitude and longitude points from the defendant’s Instagram pictures.
The witness testified the same photo of the defendant with a gun in his waistband was located about a block away from the shooting scene. However, it is unknown what time the photo was posted on Instagram.
Parties are slated to reconvene April 21.
