A 32-year-old man is scheduled to be sentenced Monday for the July 2015 shotgun killing of a woman walking on a Hollywood sidewalk in what authorities believe was an attack precipitated by a financial dispute.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert J. Perry is expected to first consider the defense’s motion for a new trial for Ezeoma Chigozie Obioha, who is facing life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Obioha was convicted Dec. 13 of first-degree murder for the July 5, 2015, slaying of Carrie Melvin, along with the special circumstance allegation of murder for financial gain and an allegation that he personally and intentionally discharged a shotgun.
The 30-year-old woman was shot to death while walking with her boyfriend near the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and McCadden Place. The prosecution alleged that the killing resulted from a business dispute.
At a March 2016 court hearing, a Los Angeles Police Department detective testified that state labor officials told him that a settlement conference had been set for July 27, 2015, to deal with a claim for just over $1,700 that Melvin had filed against Obioha stemming from alleged unpaid wages. A notice had been sent about the conference on June 29, 2015, he testified.
A document from the state labor board was on Melvin’s kitchen counter, the detective testified.
The woman’s boyfriend identified Obioha as the gunman when he was shown a “six-pack” of photos just under three weeks after the shooting, another LAPD detective testified at that hearing. Obioha has been jailed since his arrest 19 days after the killing.
“There’s nothing to celebrate here,” the victim’s father, Bernard Melvin, said outside court after the verdict. “I lost my daughter. A young man is going to spend the rest of his life in prison.”
Obioha’s sister, Nkechi Howell, said she was “devastated but not surprised” by the verdict.
“I have to be hopeful that the truth will come out and justice will be served. I know my brother didn’t do this. Our whole family knows that he’s innocent. Someone killed Carrie Melvin, but it wasn’t my brother and we have known that the entirety of this trial,” she said.
