Nov. 21—GRAND FORKS — A Grand Forks jury found Kindi Jalloh guilty of murder and tampering with evidence on Tuesday, Nov. 21, after approximately three hours and 45 minutes of deliberation.
After jury instructions and closing arguments, the 12-person jury went out for deliberation at 10:52 a.m. A verdict was reached around 2:30 p.m.
Sentencing is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Jan. 8. A pre-sentence investigation will be done and victim impact statements will be collected beforehand.
“Mr. (Douglas) Elgert did not have to die on the evening of May 23, or in the early morning hours of May 24,” Carmell Mattison, representing the state, began her closing statement Tuesday morning. “It was the defendant who chose that fate for him.”
Mattison painted a picture of what the state believes Kindi Jalloh, the defendant, did to Elgert — and when. She suggested Jalloh stabbed and slashed Elgert with a knife, disconnected his landline telephone, then sat outside drinking liquor, waiting for the man to die.
Returning inside and finding Elgert still alive, the state believes Jalloh struck him twice in the head with a Karkov vodka bottle, which police later found in a nearby trash can, covered in blood.
“He did all this the night before,” Mattison said.
Elgert’s vertebrae fractured when he was struck, paralyzing his breathing muscles and killing him in no more than one minute, a medical examiner testified earlier in the trial.
The state suspects Elgert might have already been lying dead on his kitchen floor by the time his next-door neighbor, Kyle Brown, passed by the apartment — which he testified as uncharacteristically dark, considering Elgert typically fell asleep with the TV on — around 11 p.m.
A significant factor the state kept returning to during its closing argument was that much of the blood throughout Elgert’s apartment, as well as on the items Jalloh admitted to throwing away, was dry. Additionally, the sink was dry — and the state believes Jalloh must have washed his hands after committing the crime, because police observed only dried blood in his fingernail beds the next morning.
Jalloh testified that he threw out his white tennis shoes and the vodka bottle on May 24, 2022, because they had blood on them, and he was scared of getting in trouble. His explanation of how the shoes got blood on them changed multiple times. He also said the Kasper’s Bar and Bottle Shop receipts must have already been in the Hugo’s bag before he put the shoes in there.
The state, however, believes Jalloh put thought and calculation into what he threw away. Mattison said she believes that, based on clumps of hair from Elgert’s recent haircut found strewn across the living room floor, Jalloh dug through the garbage can, looking for those receipts.
The state believes Jalloh wanted to find those receipts because one of them was for the alleged murder weapon — the Karkov bottle.
Additionally, Jalloh’s statements regarding when he threw the items away changed throughout his interview and trial testimony.
“The defendant’s ever-changing stories do not fit the evidence,” Mattison said.
Jalloh earlier told law enforcement he’d seen a garbage truck in the morning. A city sanitation employee testified that the truck was on Jalloh’s street from 9:06 a.m. to 9:13 a.m. on May 24, 2022.
Jalloh didn’t call 911 until 9:49 a.m., Mattison said.
“Maybe he made several trips to the dumpster that morning,” she said. “(He had) 43 minutes to cover his tracks.”
The clothes Jalloh wore the night before, shown in Kasper’s surveillance footage, do not match what he was wearing the next morning. Mattison suggested that perhaps Jalloh threw the bloodied clothes away before the garbage truck came, which is why they’ve never been recovered.
“But he forgot to change his t-shirt,” she said.
The t-shirt was visibly blood-stained. It was later tested and had a strong likelihood of containing Elgert’s blood, a DNA analyst testified earlier during the trial.
One last explanation Jalloh gave during his interview with police, while he was being issued a citation for tampering with evidence, was that a man killed Elgert to get his debit card. However, Jalloh never explained who would’ve done this and how he would know who it was if he wasn’t there at the time of Elgert’s death, which he was previously adamant about.
There also didn’t appear to be anything stolen from Elgert’s residence.
“If (a man) killed (Elgert) for his card, why did he leave it there?” Mattison asked.
Mattison explained to the jury that the only reasonable explanation is that Jalloh is guilty of Elgert’s murder, and though some pieces may be missing from the story, there’s enough to put together a clear picture.
“Things got out of control because of alcohol,” she said. “That’s the reasonable explanation.”
That’s what Jalloh told former Det. Mike Gavere, according to his earlier testimony, though when asked to elaborate, Jalloh said he couldn’t remember.
Steven Mottinger, representing Jalloh, said in his closing statement that there’s evidence that points to Jalloh, but it’s not enough to say without reasonable doubt that he killed Elgert.
“Everybody would like to see closure,” Mottinger said. “Everybody wants to see justice done. Everybody wants to see Doug Elgert’s memory honored.”
He asked the jury, though, to recognize that there is reasonable doubt. Jalloh had no reason to kill his friend; there’s no proof they hadn’t got along; and being guilty of tampering with evidence — which Mottinger acknowledged Jalloh is — does not mean he’s a murderer.