NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — Rashid Ali Bynum left a “digital trail” from Virginia that connects him to the scene of the “ambush” killing of Sayreville Councilwoman Eunice Dwumfour, the prosecutor told the jury as the Portsmouth man’s murder trial opened Thursday.
Dwumfour, a devout Christian, had driven home to her Sayreville townhouse on the night of Feb. 1, 2023, after shopping for groceries and running an errand for her pastor, assistant prosecutor Tzvi Dolinger said during opening statements.
“This defendant laid in wait, waiting to ambush Eunice, waiting to carry out a plan that he had been thinking about for days,” Dolinger said.
Seated in the front row of the Middlesex County Superior Court courthouse were the slain woman’s parents, other family members and the Nigerian man Dwumfour married just three months before the killing.
Three apartment residents gave statements to police after the shooting, and two described a man fleeing on foot through a breezeway. But defense attorney Michael Ashley said he plans to present a third witness who claims to have seen the alleged assailant jump into a dark-colored sedan and yell “Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!”
“The evidence in this case will show that not a single eyewitness … provided a description of the suspect which is consistent with my client,” Ashley said. The investigation, he said, “was not a search for the truth.”
The state contends that Bynum, 30, drove from Virginia the day of the killing in a white Hyundai Elantra. He is alleged to have waited in the darkness outside the townhouse complex where Dwumfour lived with her 12-year-old daughter and a roommate.
Dwumfour was in her car when gunfire erupted at 7:22 p.m. A photo of the bullet-riddled driver’s side window was shown to the jury as Dolinger described how the gunman unloaded 15 shots. She was dead by the time police arrived minutes later.
Dolinger didn’t offer a specific motive, but said the evidence that the state will offer against Bynum would convince them he is guilty of murder.
He said cell phone records place Bynum at the scene of the killing, and EZ-Pass camera footage show him passing through a toll booth headed south on the New Jersey Turnpike and back to Virginia just after the shooting. He said the state will present receipts of a white Hyundai he rented the day before in Virginia.
Ashley said the state’s case is “completely circumstantial” and Bynum “was never identified as the assailant by a single witness in this case.”
Bynum was living with his mother in Chesapeake when he was arrested at his girlfriend’s home on May 30, 2023, nearly four months after the murder. During the search, investigators recovered a 9mm handgun that matched the ballistics in the shooting, Dolinger said.
“Ballistics results show that the 15 cartridge cases left by the bullets the defendant fired when he murdered Eunice were discharged from that Glock 19,” Dolinger said.
Although Dolinger did not provide a link to Dwumfour during his opening statement, the prosecutor’s office has previously said that Bynum knew her from the Fire Congress Fellowship, a Bible study group that Dwumfour led when she lived in Virginia.
Bynum, 30, is charged with first-degree murder, unlawful possession of a weapon, and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose. He faces up to life in prison.
Dwumfour, who grew up in Newark, was in the middle of her first term on the Sayreville Council when she was killed.
Dwumfour, a Republican, was elected to the Sayreville Council in November 2021. An evangelical Christian, Dwumfour was a pastor at the Champions Royal Assembly in downtown Newark.
The trial, which is being held before Judge Joseph Paone, is expected to last four to six weeks. Testimony resumes Tuesday.
