Nearly three months after the tragedy, the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office shared in a press conference on Tuesday that 28-year-old Virginia resident Rashid Ali Bynum was arrested in connection to the shooting earlier that day and is awaiting extradition.
“Bynum was taken into custody outside a residence in Chesapeake City, Virginia, without incident,”
explained the prosecutor Yolanda Ciccone.
On Feb. 1, Dwumfour, a 30-year-old mom and church leader, was shot multiple times while she was in her SUV outside her townhouse.
According to Ciccone, Bynum was a contact in Dwomfour’s phone under the acronym “FCF,” which authorities believe stands for “Fire Congress Fellowship,” a church that the congresswoman was previously affiliated with, “which was also associated with the Champion Royal Assembly, the victim’s church at the time of her death.”.
On the day of the shooting, Bynum allegedly searched online for information on the Champion Royal Assembly church and the Sayreville area, according to Ciccone.
In the days before the murder, Bynum allegedly searched online for what magazines were compatible with a specific handgun, she said.
Bynum’s phone traveled from Virginia to New Jersey at the time of the murder, and Bynum’s physical description matched a witness description of the suspect at the scene, Ciccone said.
Officials did not discuss a possible motive and did not take questions from reporters.
Ciccone called it a “complex, extensive case.”
New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin spoke directly to the Dwumfour family at the news conference, telling them it was the beginning of the healing process and a sense of justice.
“There are no words that can be said to you that can make you whole,” Platkin said Tuesday.
At the time of the murder, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy called it “a shocking, awful event.”
“I’ve asked a whole bunch of electeds and folks in the know who have been around for a long time, can they ever remember a sitting elected official in the state being shot and killed, and no one can remember, I mean, this is a shocking, awful event,” Murphy said on the “Ask Governor Murphy” radio show on February 2.
“God bless this woman,” Murphy said at the time.
