The man accused of killing Stephanie Minter earlier this year boarded and left a bus at the same time as her, then doubled back and stood behind her as she appeared to sit unaware at a Hybla Valley bus stop during the last minutes of her life, according to witness testimony and video footage.
Following hours of testimony and surveillance footage shown during a preliminary hearing in Fairfax County General District Court yesterday (Wednesday), the second-degree murder case against 33-year-old Abdul Jalloh was certified to a grand jury in Fairfax County Circuit Court.
“More likely than not, Mr. Jalloh was the one who committed this,” Judge Tamika Jones said, adding that “the Commonwealth has met their burden” of probable cause to justify further prosecution.
While Minter’s death has received extensive coverage in media outlets over the past year, the hearing provided the first comprehensive, publicly available viewing of evidence that prosecutors say links Jalloh to the Fredericksburg mother’s death on Feb. 23.
A preliminary hearing is not a ruling on a defendant’s guilt or innocence; it is a necessary step for prosecutors to establish that the charge has merit before further legal proceedings.
Surveillance footage captured by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s (WMATA) F1x bus on the night of Minter’s death showed people lined up at Lucans Lane getting on a northbound bus. Minter, wearing blue leggings, appears in the line. A man wearing a red hat and a red and black coat — identified by police as Jalloh — also boarded.
In the footage, Minter can be seen taking a seat near the front of the bus, while the man takes a seat further down.
They rode without interacting with one another for a long stretch. Minter then exited the bus via its rear door at a Richmond Highway and Arlington Drive stop, and took a seat in the bus stop shelter. The man then got off the bus near the front; in the video, he is seen walking away, and then turning.
A bus driver testified that, because she had arrived at the stop early, she sat waiting for two minutes and saw the man standing behind the shelter. His behavior —”just standing there, watching her and me” — seemed “odd and strange,” said the driver, who wasn’t asked directly to identify the man as Jalloh.
The driver added that she had never seen someone get off the bus and stand behind the enclosure.
“It was odd that he would stand there,” she said, stating that, as a woman, the behavior stood out to her.
Minter didn’t appear to notice the man directly behind her. When the driver pulled away, the man was still standing there.
Another bus pulled up about 10 minutes later to find blood everywhere. When police officers arrived on the scene shortly after 7 p.m., they saw blood running from the area where Minter was to a cement retaining wall.
Fairfax County police officials said that Minter was pronounced dead at the scene and appeared to have been stabbed multiple times.
A compilation of surveillance footage appears to show the man walking toward the Mount Vernon Square shopping center and past a KFC, where, a few days later, an employee found a red coat and hat near a dumpster. After asking coworkers if the clothes belonged to anyone, the employee threw them out.
In court yesterday, the employee identified the coat and hat as the same ones the man was seen wearing on the bus.
The Fairfax County Police Department quickly identified Jalloh as a person of interest in the case, reporting publicly that he was the last individual seen with Minter and sharing a photo of him from the Metrobus surveillance footage.
Per the FCPD, a worker at a business in the 8600 block of Richmond Highway in Woodlawn recognized Jalloh from the image circulated from police and called him in, leading to his arrest on Feb. 24.
Initially charged with petit larceny for an unrelated theft reported that day, Jalloh confirmed he was the man wearing the red coat and hat on the bus, Brian Byerson, a homicide detective with the FCPD, testified.
According to Byerson, Jalloh, who was homeless at the time, said someone subsequently stole the garments while he was taking a “bird bath” — cleaning himself with wipes.
Jalloh said he had been traveling “to visit his man because he was going to smoke crack,” Byerson said.
Asked why he had returned to Minter after deboarding the bus, Jalloh told Byerson that it was at Minter’s request, the detective said. The two had never met before, but Jalloh told the detective that she had called him by his nickname, “AJ,” and pleaded for him to stay.
“He told me that they had met up by Lucans Lane and Route 1 … She had asked him to steal some beer for her,” Byerson said, but Jalloh said he declined the request and “stole his own beer.”
When the defense counsel asked if Jalloh had denied killing Minter, the prosecution objected on the basis of hearsay, and Byerson was not allowed to answer.
Minter’s death has received national attention in part due to the violent nature of the crime, but also because Jalloh, a native of Sierra Leone who was in the country without authorization, had a history of arrests, including for knife-related incidents.
Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano and Sheriff Stacey Kincaid were called to testify at a House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement hearing centered around the case earlier this year.
