A two-time New Yorker shot and killed his transgender girlfriend “to silence” him from ranting about their affair. His murder trial was announced after his girlfriend already knew about it.
Daqua Ramek Ritter, 26, is accused of shooting and killing Pebbles Radim Doe three times on August 4, 2019, in a rural South Carolina town where she was spending the summer with relatives. He is facing his first federal hate crime trial.
The court heard that word of the incident had been swirling among the 8,000 residents of Allendale and had already reached Ritter’s live-in girlfriend, DeLacia Greene, who lives in his Brooklyn home.
Ritter initially tried to lie that Doe was his cousin, but his girlfriend found a message on his cell phone from an unsaved number that said “get a room” and it turned out to be a lie. He testified that he had a “gut feeling” that it was from Doe.
She confronted Mr. Ritter and began hurling homophobic slurs at him, making Mr. Ritter “extremely upset,” prosecutors alleged in court.
Ben Garner, an assistant district attorney for South Carolina, said Doe was “furious” when she learned that she had told one of her friends about their relationship.
“He killed her to keep her quiet,” Garner told jurors.
The tattoo on Ritter’s left wrist was visible on body camera footage when Ritter was pulled over by police and given a $72 ticket on the day of Doe’s murder. He is said to have lured her into driving around the area.
Two and a half hours later, Doe’s body was found slumped on the driver’s side of a car parked in a secluded driveway near the home where Ritter’s uncle lived.
Ritter went to the house that night and was acting strangely before being picked up in his car, Kyra Mallory, the uncle’s ex-girlfriend, testified. According to WISTV.
Other friends said he seemed “nervous” after Doe’s murder, and that night they saw the suspect throw a book bag into the fire and ask him to get rid of the gun. Some friends claimed to have witnessed it.
“No one needs to worry [Doe] Ritter said, according to another friend who was at the scene of the alleged arson.
As rumors of their affair spread, Ritter also was heard in court over text messages recovered by an FBI analyst, and Ritter instructed Doe to delete all text messages.
Doe’s cousin, Yanna Albany, said she also followed Ritter, but was only cut off when the transgender woman told her she was seeing Ritter.
When Albany broke up with Ritter, Ritter turned red and threatened to punch Doe for “lying,” the cousin said.
Green said that for several days after the killing, Ritter was dirty, smelly and couldn’t stop walking around. And when he asked her directly if he had killed Doe, “he lowered his head and laughed a little.”
One of Ritter’s cousins, Jamie Prester, said the suspect confessed to the murder while she was in the car with her son, claiming he killed her after she refused to delete photos from her phone.
Ritter is charged with “hate crime of murder of a transgender woman because of her gender identity,” using a firearm in connection with a hate crime and obstructing justice.
His lawyers argued that his sexuality and relationship with Doe were not the subject of the trial, and that the jury should only decide whether he murdered her.
One defense attorney, Lindsey Vann, argued Tuesday that even though the suspect did it voluntarily, there is no physical evidence, including gunshot residue, to point to Ritter as the gunman. .
The lies Mr. Ritter told investigators were the result of a deep-seated fear of being considered a suspect, and were further fueled by local gossip about his relationship with Mr. Ritter, Vann said. said.
Prosecutors do not plan to seek the death penalty, but if convicted, Ritter could receive multiple life sentences.
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