Chesapeake man convicted of murdering girlfriend

CHESAPEAKE

Makail Griffin, just 11, didn't start to cry until near the end of his story.

He had been testifying in Circuit Court about his dad yelling and holding a gun. About his mom telling him and his younger sister she loved them. About soon after hearing a "boom" and the thud of his mom's body hitting the floor of their Riverwalk-area townhouse.

He dropped his head and cried when describing his father afterward coming into his sister's room where the two children sat, still holding the handgun.

His father, sitting across the courtroom Friday at the defendant's table, wailed out.

"I already told you I did it!" Malik A. Griffin cried out. "You all ain't got to do my son! I love my son, man!"

Griffin never denied that he shot Jamica Bynum in the head the morning of June 3, 2009. But testifying Friday as part of a two-day trial - long-postponed in part because of questions about his competency - he said he loved her, and didn't remember doing it.

Still, Judge Marjorie A. Taylor Arrington cited other evidence Friday as sufficient to find him guilty of first-degree murder and related firearm charges: Griffin, now 27, fired two shots at Bynum, 25. He didn't call 911 afterward. He fled, if briefly, driving into North Carolina with a friend before returning to Virginia Beach, where police arrested him hours after the shooting.

Arrington scheduled Griffin's sentencing for July 26.

Griffin's lawyer, James Broccoletti, argued there was not the premeditation required for first-degree murder, no evidence of ill-will between Griffin and Bynum, close since their early teens.

A worried Bynum had driven Griffin and their children in the middle of the night to one sister's house. Griffin was sleepless and babbling, wearing only boxer shorts. He calmed, and they returned home.

Makail in a shy voice recalled his mother waking him for school, and he waking his sister before brushing his teeth. He could hear muted yelling from his parents' room - from his father, he said.

"I saw a gun," Makail said.

"Where'd you see a gun?" Chief Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Lori Galbraith asked.

"Dad's hand," the boy replied.

He heard his mother yell, and then a shot.

Bynum, shot through the forehead, fell clutching her car keys, Galbraith said.

A sister of Griffin's, Sharita Griffin, testified her brother called her shortly before 6 a.m., "ranting and raving" about conspiracies. When no one answered her return calls, she hustled to her brother's house. Another sister, Takecia Griffin, who had received the worried Bynum hours earlier, also had gone to the home after Bynum had called her saying something like "he's going to kill me."

Griffin answered the door, eyes red and lips frothy, waving a black semiautomatic as he talked. Sharita Griffin said the sisters tried to calm him, and she took the gun out of his hand, stashing it behind a vacuum cleaner.

They inched up the stairs, where the silent children stood at the top, until they saw Bynum's hand and a pool of blood. They coaxed the children down and took them outside.

Malik Griffin ran out the back door. Takecia Griffin called police.

Matthew Bowers, (757) 222-5221, matthew.bowers@pilotonline.com