Murder suspect testifies on last day of trial

By D.C. Witness Staff - July 12, 2017
Court | Homicides | Suspects |

The man charged with the murder of Onyekachi Osuchukwu III testified at his own trial that he shot his friend in self defense during an argument about their strategy for selling drugs.

Eugene Burns, charged with first-degree murder while armed testified on the last day of his trial that he and Osuchukwu were shipping drugs from California to DC. Osuchukwu was visiting from California, and at Burns’ mother’s home when he was killed.

Burns testified he ordered Osuchukwu’s plane ticket to DC on his mom’s debit card, but accidentally charged her card twice. She became angry, and ordered the shipments to stop. Osuchukwu was angered by this, Burns testified, because he didn’t have anywhere else to ship the drugs. Their supplier was also unhappy because the drugs weren’t being sold fast enough.

Burns testified that while Osuchukwu became mad when he suggested changing their strategy to sell the drugs faster while at his mom’s apartment. Osuchukwu allegedly looked around the apartment for a gun, Burns testified. In the interim, Burns got his own gun from under the couch and put it in his waistband. Burns refused to tell Osuchukwu where his gun was, and testified Osuchukwu reached for something under his shirt and charged at him. Burns testified he pulled out his gun hoping it would get Osuchukwu to stop, but the two got into a struggle. Burns said he was able to get a grip on the gun, and he fired several shots into Osuchukwu. He testified he lied to police because he did not know there were self-defense laws in DC.

As to text messages introduced in court and google searches regarding murder, Burns denied either of those were related to planning Osuchukwu’s murder. He said the web history on his phone relating to murder was just the result of his taking a quiz on Facebook titled “Are you capable of killing your best friend?” which caused him to stumble onto other pages.