NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — Jalen Garces, the man accused of killing Ai Muhammad in June of last year, saw his case moved up to a grand jury Wednesday.
Garces was present for the preliminary hearing, though he did not testify and his attorney offered no evidence.
Ali Muhammad was the son of Bilal Muhammad, a community activist and founder of Stop the Violence Team. Bilal Muhammad previously told WAVY he was on the phone with him when the shooting happened.
Though multiple witnesses testified, much of the evidence laid out by the Commonwealth was captured by traffic cameras and taken from the computer in the vehicle Garces was driving that night.
There were no witnesses to the shooting itself, but two women did testify about what they saw in the seconds and minutes after. One told police she saw two men having a conversation while she was sitting in her car after work. She looked away, heard a gunshot and then saw one of the men get into a car and leave.
A detective told the court that she used that witness’ vehicle description — a dark colored Ford Mustang — to track down the car Garces was driving in the FLOCK system.
The detective told the court that she found hits for the vehicle in the intersection of Shore Drive and East Little Creek Road, first at 10:05 p.m., headed into Ocean View, and then at 10:34 p.m. headed away.
Another Norfolk Police officer testified that he responded to the shooting incident in the 9600 block of 1st Bay St. at 10:35 p.m. that night.
A Virginia Beach Police officer took the stand as an expert witness to explain what was uncovered in the computer of the vehicle. NPD arrested Garces and impounded the car, but VBPD performed the analysis.
He told the court that a myriad of data had been pulled from the car’s telematic control system — from the path it took that night, to which phones connected to the car’s Bluetooth and even how many seconds the driver’s-side door remained open at the scene.
Using surveillance video and the car’s own track logs, the officer was able to reconstruct the exact route it took that night in one-second increments from the Wawa on Ferrell Pkwy in Virginia Beach to 1st Bay Street in Ocean View.
The judge ultimately certified the case. If a grand jury finds probable cause, it will move on to Circuit Court. A new court date has not yet been set.
