The person was sentenced to life in jail for the homicide of a New Jersey metropolis councilwoman proper outdoors her house as her household waited inside.
Rashid Bynum was convicted in June of first-degree homicide and second-degree weapon possession within the 2023 taking pictures loss of life of Sayreville Councilwoman Eunice Dwumfour, whose household sat weeping in courtroom on Monday. Her sister urged the decide the impose the utmost sentence on the person who fastidiously deliberate the homicide of her sister.
“You drove how long to kill a woman? What kind of a man are you?” requested Priscilla Dwumfour.
A Middlesex county assistant prosecutor learn a letter from the sufferer’s teenage daughter, who was simply 11 when her mom was killed.
“I still have not recovered from what happened to her, so why did you kill my mom?” the letter learn.
Bynum didn’t converse in courtroom, and has by no means taken duty for the homicide. He bought a life sentence, with the decide saying the killing “was committed in an especially cruel and depraved manner,” and cited Bynum’s lack of regret. He will not be eligible for parole till 2088, when he’s 94 years previous.
Dwumfour, who served on the Sayreville Borough Council for a few 12 months, was gunned down on Feb. 1, 2023. Bynum wasn’t tracked down till Might 30, almost 4 months after the lethal taking pictures.
Investigators mentioned Bynum had recognized Dwumfour, nevertheless it was not clear how nicely the 2 knew one another. The one connection between the 2 police have is that the suspect was linked to the church Dwumfour attended.
Investigators traced Bynum’s travels from his cellphone and car location knowledge from the evening of the killing, Middlesex County Prosecutor Yolanda Ciccone mentioned after the arrest was made, citing surveillance video and E-ZPass data. He additionally matched the outline of the gunman given by neighbors in Sayreville.
Bynum, 29, was taken into custody outdoors a residence in Chesapeake, Virginia, with out incident.
In keeping with a household lawyer, neither Dwumfour’s mother and father nor sibling acknowledged the identify or image of the suspect. Dwumfour, who grew up in Newark, did stay in Virginia at one level, and household lawyer John Wisniewski mentioned Bynum had beforehand lived in Sayreville. However past that, he didn’t know the character of their relationship and the prosecutor declined to debate a potential motive.
Dwumfour was a pastor in a prosperity gospel church, Champions Royal Meeting, that’s primarily based in Nigeria, and she or he bought married there in Nov. 2022 to a fellow pastor from Abuja. She was additionally an officer of a associated entity, the Hearth Congress Fellowship, that has a department in Virginia. Bynum was listed in her cellphone contacts underneath that group’s acronym.
“A search of the victim’s phone revealed Bynum as a contact with the acronym FCF,” mentioned Ciccone.
Court docket data and tax filings recommend that church funds within the U.S. have been tight. Dwumfour had been named in a sequence of landlord-tenant disputes in Newark courting from 2017 to 2020 involving the fellowship, which had seen its earnings drop from about $250,000 in 2017 to only $350 in 2020.
By way of the months earlier than the arrest was made, the councilwomen’s relations expressed their frustration. Dwumfour’s daughter described what she heard simply outdoors her window the evening of the taking pictures, because the household was ready inside for the mom to complete parking her car.
“We’re waiting for my mom to look for a parking space, and then she was taking a lot of time so we started calling her over and over again, but it wouldn’t pick up. And then we heard gunshots and we started calling the police,” Nicole Teliano beforehand instructed the AP.
Dwumfour, a Republican, was elected to her first three-year time period in 2021, when she ousted a Democratic incumbent. Colleagues recalled her as a soft-spoken religious Christian who might keep her composure in contentious conditions.
A heart-felt plea for justice from the household of the councilwoman killed in New Jersey. Brian Thompson reviews.
Related Press reporter Maryclaire Dale contributed to this report.
