Seated at a round table before two Concord police detectives on the morning of May 31, 2017, Daswan Jette said he had no knowledge of a disturbance that had occurred roughly nine hours earlier at Penacook Place, where he lived with his then-girlfriend.
Jette told detectives he had heard dogs barking and couples arguing but nothing to cause him alarm. He said he had walked his girlfriend to her car sometime between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. the prior evening, and that he then retired to his apartment and went to bed at about 11 o’clock.
When Concord police Detective Wade Brown knocked on the door to apartment No. 71 that May morning at about 6:02, Jette answered. He was home alone and, although cooperative, questioned why police officers were at the apartment complex.
“I told him that we were detaining him for purposes of doing the search warrant and that he was going to be in our custody,” Brown testified before jurors Wednesday. “He asked how long it would take and when we would get back.”
By this time, police had identified Jette as a possible suspect in the murder of 23-year-old Sabrina Galusha, who had been at the apartment complex on the night of May 30, 2017, for a marijuana deal that witnesses say quickly unraveled. Galusha and her friends knew Jette only as “Dee” and had never previously met him until that night, according to prior testimony.
Although police had obtained warrants to search both Jette’s body for possible injuries and the apartment where he lived, Brown said Jette was not under arrest – and he told him so.
“I told him I was investigating a disturbance that had occurred in the vestibule or the outer area of the building that prior night,” Brown said.
Jette said he had seen the cops at one point but didn’t know anyone had been harmed. He also came clean with police that he had a few grams of marijuana on a clothes dresser in the master bedroom.
“Had marijuana been mentioned to him at all during the investigation?” Senior Assistant Attorney General Ben Agati asked Brown during direct questioning Wednesday.
“No,” Brown replied.
For the first time since the murder trial began more than two weeks ago, the jury heard Wednesday afternoon from Jette who spoke to police on the morning of May 31, 2017, after waiving his Miranda rights at the Concord Police Department. As prosecutors played the roughly 45-minute interview, jurors followed along with a copy of the printed transcript.
During the interview, Jette focused on the marijuana that he told police officers they would find in his apartment, telling them he got it from the Boston area and that he hoped he wasn’t incriminating himself by disclosing the details of his drug use.
He then questioned why police were interested in talking with him about a reported altercation outside Penacook Place.
“You were known as Dee, right?” Brown asked Jette
“Not around here,” Jette responded.
Brown continued by telling Jette that the name disclosed by witnesses was a person named “Dee,” an African-American man in his 20s.
“What we’re trying to get to the bottom of is if there’s something that happened in that vestibule or lobby,” Brown told Jette.
“We just want to hear what happened from your perspective,” he continued.
Detectives Brown and Brian Womersley asked Jette if he had met up with a group of people outside Penacook Place on the night of May 30, 2017, if he had carried a knife with him that night, if he was aware of a stabbing and if anyone had threatened him. Jette repeatedly answered “no.”
Toward the end of the interview, Womersley explained to Jette that other detectives would be taking him to the basement of the police station to take photographs, collect DNA samples and get fingerprints. Jette said he understood that he was in police custody until the search warrant was complete, and indicated that he wanted to get it over with so he could return home.
But that morning, Jette never returned to apartment 71 at Penacook Place. As the department’s investigation into Galusha’s death continued, detectives obtained an arrest warrant for Jette. He has remained in the state’s custody ever since.
Prosecutors allege that Jette fatally stabbed Galusha in the chest as she and her friends tried to flee the apartment complex on the night of May 30, 2017. New Hampshire Chief Medical Examiner Jennie Duval, who concluded her testimony Wednesday, told the jury that a knife had penetrated Galusha’s heart, rapidly causing her to bleed out and her vital organs to stop.
Duval testified that Galusha likely lost consciousness after a minimum of 10 seconds and died within minutes. As public defender Alexander Vitale repeatedly questioned Duval on that timeline and the symptoms Galusha may have experienced preceding her death, Jette removed his glasses and began to sob with his face in his hands. Judge John Kissinger Jr., who is presiding over the trial, quickly excused the jury from the courtroom, while Jette and his attorneys also retreated.
Shortly after the trial resumed, attorneys argued outside the jury’s presence about whether Galusha’s father, Mark Galusha, would be permitted to identify his daughter in a recent photograph, and if that photograph would be available to jurors during deliberations. Defense attorneys objected to prosecutors’ request to admit the photograph, saying it would “evoke the sympathies of the jury” and be unfairly prejudicial to Jette. However, Kissinger sided with prosecutors, saying he found “nothing inflammatory” about the image of Galusha, who the state bears the burden of identifying as the murder victim.
On the witness stand, Mark Galusha told jurors about his daughter, who he said had just become a licensed nursing assistant and was working in the state hospital’s food services department.
He said Sabrina Galusha had recently moved out of an apartment on Washington Street, where she’d been living with friends, and back home. On the evening of her death, Mark Galusha had planned to go to that apartment to pick up a dresser that Sabrina Galusha had not previously been able to move out.
But the Galushas never made it to Washington Street that night. Mark Galusha said he recalled seeing his daughter run out around dinner time, never to return. He said she did not say where she was going, and noted that she left her wallet and cellphone behind.
Testimony in the murder trial will continue Thursday in Merrimack County Superior Court in Concord.
(Alyssa Dandrea can be reached at 369-3319 or at adandrea@cmonitor.com.)