An Alabama jury has begun deliberations in the murder trial of Ibraheem Yazeed, the man accused of kidnapping and killing 19-year-old Aniah Blanchard in 2019.
Prosecutors asked the jury to find Yazeed guilty on two counts of murder, one for murder while committing a kidnapping and the other for murder while committing a robbery, WBRC reported.
Blanchard, a Southern Union State Community College student and stepdaughter of UFC fighter Walt Harris, vanished from an Auburn convenience store on October 23, 2019, as CrimeOnline reported. Two days later, authorities in Montgomery found her vehicle, damaged and with a “life-threatening” amount of blood on the passenger side.
A month later, investigators found Blanchard’s body in a wooded area in Macon County. She had been shot to death.
Yazeed, who was out on bond on attempted murder charges at the time, was reportedly seen at the convenience store getting into Blanchard’s car. He was later charged with her death.
Blanchard’s kidnapping and murder prompted the Alabama state legislature to pass a law, known as Aniah’s Law, that allowed judges to deny bond for additional charges. Originally, bond could only be denied in a capital murder case. Bond can now be denied if a defendant is charged with murder, rape, sodomy, domestic violence, human trafficking, burglary, arson, or robbery.
Prosecutors said during the trial that they couldn’t prove that Blanchard didn’t allow Yazeed into her car voluntarily but that the blood and bullet casing found in the car indicated that at some point, she no longer consented to his presence. On the robbery charge, prosecutors say he was seen by eyewitnesses with Blanchard’s vehicle and her phone was never recovered.
Yazeed’s defense argued that all the state’s evidence is circumstantial with nothing tying him direction to the kidnapping and murder.
A third murder charge was dropped before closing arguments began, WAKA reported.
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[Featured image: Aniah Blanchard/Central Alabama CrimeStoppers]
