Jury selection started Monday morning in the case of a 28-year-old man who allegedly strangled his pregnant girlfriend inside a one-bedroom efficiency apartment near Chelten and Chew avenues in East Germantown.
Roysce "Yusef" Haynes is charged with first-degree murder in connection with the Sept. 2012 of Atiya Majah Perry.
Opening arguments in the case are expected to commence on Tuesday morning.
At that Dec. 2012 hearing, an abuse-of-corpse charge was dropped after the judge heard Haynes' assertion that after killing his wife of two months, he cleaned her body and wrapped it in a sheet in accordance with Muslim pre-funeral custom.
Victim's mother speaks
For her part, Atiya's mother Patricia is pleased that the case will finally be heard in court.
"I'm so glad that the trial finally came, and am happy he didn't take a [plea] deal," Patricia Perry told NewsWorks. "I want him to get two life sentences. My heart is broken."
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What the suspect says happened
On Sept. 10, probation agents arrived at a tiny one-bedroom efficiency on the 800 block of E. Chelten Ave. to perform a routine check on Haynes. There, they found Perry's body and took Haynes into custody.
When he got to the Roundhouse, Haynes requested a cup of hot tea and was interviewed by two detectives, one of whom was Tolliver.
"I didn't mean to kill her," the suspect allegedly told them, continuing that an argument about family interference in religious matters led her to an altercation during which Perry started "hitting me with a closed fist on the side of the head. She pulled out her pepper spray. That's when I choked her. ... I felt her go limp."
Haynes' statement makes mention of having met Perry in March and getting married in July. He claimed that her family was "telling her not to wear her [Muslim] garb," and this caused problems in their relationship.
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