The ex-boyfriend of a 16-year-old girl found dead in a park in Fairfax County, Virginia, in January is accused of killing her.
Nebiyu Ebrahim, 18, was charged with first-degree murder in the death of Jholie Moussa, police announced Thursday. The high school student had a protective order against Ebrahim, who police say strangled and assaulted her twice previously.
Moussa, who attended Mount Vernon High School, died of asphyxia by smothering and blunt force trauma, police said a medical examiner determined.
Her family was devastated by the news, her aunt Veronica Eyenga said.
"I'm numb with shock. It's like we're reliving the moment again," she said.
On Friday, crime scene detectives and a dive team spent hours searching for potential evidence in a pond with fountains in Ebrahim's neighborhood. Maj. Richard Perez, major crimes commander, said officers "know precisely what it is we are looking for." He declined to say what it was.
Moussa left home under mysterious circumstances on Jan 12. She told her twin sister she was going to a party in Norfolk, nearly 200 miles away. Her family reported her missing the next day, and the FBI joined the investigation four days later, on Jan. 17.
The day Moussa disappeared, she seemed distracted after school, her twin, Zhane Moussa, said.
Our homicide detectives along with our Search Rescue Team are currently looking for evidence related to the murder of Jholie Moussa in a pond in the area of Pole Road and Pondside Terrace. More details to come. #FCPD pic.twitter.com/iHgCVGOtQu
— Fairfax County Police (@FairfaxCountyPD) August 31, 2018
"She was doing my hair and then she stopped, for a good minute, to text some more. Then, out of nowhere, she was like, 'I gotta go, I gotta go!'" she said.
Moussa told her sister she needed to go out for a minute. Zhane Moussa sent her a concerned text and got an odd response.
"She texted me that she was going to Norfolk," Zhane Moussa said. "And I'm, like, isn't that more than 3 hours away?"
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Later that night, the girls' mother, Syreeta Steward-Hill, missed a call from her daughter. Then, she heard nothing. It wasn't like her.
"Normally, she would have responded back to me. If she calls me and I don't answer, she always follows it up with a text," Steward-Hill said.
The family never heard from her again.
Fairfax County police entered her into the National Crime Information Center database as a runaway juvenile.
"Based on the facts of the case, there is nothing that indicates that Moussa is in any danger," the department said in a statement at the time.
Family members say they knew Moussa had not run away. They felt that police dismissed their pleas to search for her.
"When you hear the term runaway, you get all these negative connotations of some child who's wild and loose and unruly, and that was so not our child," Eyenga, Moussa's aunt, said.
But police say searches for Moussa began soon after she was reported missing.
"We as a police department, from the moment we received the call, never stopped to find Jholie. We entered [her] into the missing juvenile system, which then has national and regional reach," Fairfax County Police Chief Edwin Roessler said Friday.
On Jan. 25, 14 days after Moussa disappeared, police found her body in a wooded area of Woodlawn Park, less than a mile from where she was last seen in the 4200 block of Sonia Court. An officer found the body almost entirely covered by leaves.
The preliminary identification of Moussa's body was based on her appearance, including a tattoo, police said. On her right shoulder, she had a tattoo of an infinity loop with her name and her twin's name.
The park where Moussa's body was found is within walking distance of where Ebrahim lived with his parents, on Diablo Court.
Police said on Jan. 30 that a juvenile was person of interest. That person was Ebrahim, police said Thursday. They did not release his name at the time because he was 17.
Earlier this year, Moussa's mother, Steward-Hill, vowed to work in support of other families whose children go missing.
"In addition to being Zhane's mother and Jholie's mother, I'm now going to strive to be a voice for so many families that -- a child will walk out the door and never come home, and they're just labeled as runaways, and they're dismissed. And that's not OK," she said.
The family is leaning on each other and on their faith to cope. Moussa's twin is struggling to understand her life without her constant companion.
"She's trying to identify with being Zhane and not Zhane and Jholie," Steward-Hill said.
The twins had never been apart for more than 24 hours.
Ebrahim is behind bars and due back in court Oct. 10.
