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By
D.C. Witness Staff
- March 21, 2019
Court
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Featured
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Homicides
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Suspects
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After four weeks of trial and two days of deliberations, a jury found a man guilty for the murder of a 34-year-old woman from North Carolina.
El Hadji Toure, 30, was found guilty of all counts, including first-degree murder while armed, first-degree sexual abuse, kidnapping while armed and robbery while armed, for stabbing Corrina Mehiel on the 600 block of 14th Street, NE in 2017. According to the prosecution, Mehiel was in the process of returning home when she was killed.
During closing arguments on March 19, the prosecution said Mehiel had a “lovely” weekend with her boyfriend and looked forward to returning home to be with friends and family.
“He took away her hope; her possibilities,” the prosecutor said. “He took away her next day.”
According to court documents, on March 21, 2017, Mehiel was found unresponsive, tied up with clothing, and suffering from multiple stab wounds to her neck and body. She was pronounced dead on the scene.
According to the prosecution’s theory, Toure attacked Mehiel while she was loading her car outside the apartment she was renting. Toure then held Mehiel hostage, raped and stabbed her to death. Apparently, Toure stole Mehiel’s blue Toyota Prius and bank cards.
In the following days, surveillance footage shows a man who appears to be Toure using Mehiel’s ATM card to withdraw money from various ATMs in the DMV area. In total, $4000 was withdrawn.
The prosecutor said Toure had a consciousness of guilt by getting rid of artifacts that would tie him to the crime, such as Mehiel’s car and the pair of jeans he was wearing on the day of the crime.
“He’s giving you the puzzle pieces that show his guilt,” said the prosecutor.
On March 5, Toure’s father told the jury that the person in the footage “looks like” his son.
Along with the video footage, a forensics expert said a DNA mixture from Mehiel’s body contained results from Mehiel, her boyfriend and a third source. The third source, according to the expert, is much more likely to be from Toure than if it came from an unknown individual.
However, according to the defense, Toure and Mehiel had a consensual sexual encounter and the true murderer attacked the victim afterwards.
“The evidence doesn’t show what actually happened to Ms. Mehiel,” said defense lawyer Jacqueline Cadman. “It shows the defendant in this unfortunate situation.”
The defense also claimed that some samples of DNA had been contaminated when they were processed by forensic services.
“[The prosecution] has absolutely failed to maintain the evidence of this case,” said Cadman.
Apparently, earlier that same month, a rape with many similarities to Mehiel’s occurred in the Kalorama area in Northwest DC on March 3, 2017. The prosecution did not notify the defense of the earlier rape so, Judge Juliet Mckenna sanctioned the prosecution to prevent them from challenging shelter documents that placed Toure at a homeless shelter away from the scene. As a result of the sanction, the prosecution was not allowed to draw on similarities between the two cases, while Mehiel’s case underwent trial.
Cadman insisted that along with the prosecution’s failures, the police didn’t conduct a thorough investigation into the murder.
A detective told the jury that a tip hotline was made available to the public. According to the detective, the police received multiple tips about individuals who may have been involved in Mehiel’s murder. The police also received a tip from Mehiel’s family about a potential suspect who had a “thing” for Mehiel.
However, the tips were disregarded when police found out that they pointed to white men as the murderer. According to the police, they were searching for the black man who was seen in the surveillance footage.
In addition to not looking into the tips, on Feb. 26, a Metropolitan Police Department officer testified that he turned off his body worn camera shortly after arriving to the crime scene, despite laws prohibiting him from doing so.
Toure is scheduled to be sentenced on June 7.