The Virginia man accused of driving up to New Jersey, gunning down a Republican councilwoman in the parking lot outside her condo, and then returning south will face extradition to New Jersey at the end of June.
Rashid Ali Bynum, who turned 29 Wednesday, was a member of Eunice Dwumfour’s congregation years ago, according to Christian Onuoha, who was Dwumfour’s colleague on the borough council and also a member of her church.
“She was his pastor around 2018,” he told Fox News Digital. “That was the last time any of us remember seeing him.”
Bynum was a member of a church branch in Virginia, where Dwumfour coordinated services on a semi-regular basis from 2016 to 2018, he said.
EUNICE DWUMFOUR MURDER: NEW JERSEY POLICE ARREST MAN MONTHS AFTER SLAYING OF REPUBLICAN COUNCILWOMAN
Rashid Ali Bynum of Virginia has been arrested in connection with the February shooting of New Jersey Republican Councilwoman Eunice Dwumfour in Sayreville. His number was in her phone in affiliation with her former church, according to prosecutors. (Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office)
Onuoha showed Fox News Digital two images from the summer of 2018 of Bynum at church events, one of which also showed Dwumfour and another woman in the same frame.
While the councilman said Bynum attended the church regularly with his family and friends, court records show the suspect’s legal troubles began when he was a juvenile.
Bynum has a lengthy rap sheet, including allegations of fraud, forgery and theft stretching back to 2013, the records reveal. He faced firearms charges in Virginia in 2015 and again in Maryland in 2019.
Sayreville Councilwoman Eunice Dwumfour, 30, was shot and killed on Feb. 1, 2023. (Sayreville GOP)
In the 2015 case, he pleaded guilty to illegally carrying a concealed weapon, a misdemeanor, and received a sentence of three years’ probation, court records show.
Now he faces a count of first-degree murder and gun-related charges in Dwumfour’s death.
Dwumfour’s husband Peter Akwue, also known as Eze Kings and a pastor in the church but based in Africa, told Fox News Digital that he did not know Bynum.
A day after the arrest, he said, the healing process had finally started.
The 30-year-old Dwumfour was a former EMT, an IT consultant and active in her local church as well as in nonprofit groups and was on the Sayreville Borough Council’s Human Relations Commission, serving at-risk communities.
She won an upset election as a new candidate in November 2021 over the incumbent Democrat.
Police found her riddled with gunshot wounds in her white Nissan SUV around 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 1.
LISTEN: 911 emergency calls from the murder of New Jersey Councilwoman Eunice Dwumfour
Witnesses reported seeing a man firing into her window before running off.
Middlesex County Prosecutor Yolanda Ciccone revealed during a Tuesday afternoon news briefing that Bynum was arrested at his home in Chesapeake City, Virginia, with help from the FBI and local police.
Police found Bynum’s number saved in Dwumfour’s phone with the letters FCF, an acronym for the Fire Congress Fellowship, which shares an association with Dwumfour’s church, Ciccone said.
They tracked the phone and his rented Hyundai Elantra from Virginia to New Jersey and back around the time of the slaying, she said.
“This was a very complex, extensive case with painstaking police work every single moment until today,” Ciccone said, “and it will continue after today.”
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Bynum was arraigned Wednesday morning and is being held without bail. He’s due back in court for a bond hearing on June 2, and his extradition hearing was scheduled for June 29.
He faces life in prison if convicted.
