After he killed his cousin, he moved into her bedroom, Charlotte murder witnesses testify
Inside apartment 201, Brittini Ward and her sister shared a bedroom.
Days after her murder, the man police say killed her moved in.
He took Brittini’s twin bed, where on May 5, 2010, she lay stiffly with bloody sheets and a bruised neck and filled her dresser and closet with his clothes.
Brittini’s mother and siblings, revealed new details in her murder while testifying in Derek Ward’s Charlotte trial Wednesday. Testimony continued through Friday and will resume next week.
They told the jury that Ward, a cousin they barely knew, said he came to their home to “get the demon out” of Brittini.
Brittini, then 23, had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia for nearly five years, family said. They believed him when he said she was possessed, they said, at least back then.
Ward is accused of murdering and raping Brittini in May 2010, weeks after her family first met him. In Mecklenburg County Courthouse this week, he is representing himself in Charlotte’s first pro se murder trial since 2012.
Despite concerns about Ward’s mental health from his mother and advising lawyer, Chief Superior Court Judge Carla Archie allowed the trial to continue this week. Ward has been in jail for 14 years. Judges have found him mentally unfit to stand trial several times.
Details shared so far in court have established a timeline surrounding Derek Ward’s abrupt arrival, foreshadowing comments and behavior after Brittini’s death.
‘I’m here to do something...’
In 2010, Brittini, her three siblings and her mother, Dawn Ward, lived in Charlotte.
Derek Ward did not.
One day, he messaged Fallon, Brittini’s younger 16-year-old sister, on Facebook and asked for the family’s home phone number. He was her cousin, he told Fallon, and he wanted to see Brittini. She gave him the number, and then he showed up in late April — unannounced — with Bradley, another cousin the family vaguely knew.
The two left after a “nice visit,” family said in court, and then Ward returned — alone — a week later.
Why is he here? Fallon texted her mom.
“You tell me, mini me,” Dawn responded, text messages shared in court show.
“I’m here to do something,” Ward told Fallon. “You’re not going to understand why I’m doing it, but we’re gonna have a good time.”
Ward in court Thursday suggested Brittini had messaged him on Facebook first.
In 2010, from April 29 to May 4, the family ate, played games and walked in the neighborhood with Ward, each said during their time on the witness stand. They had a “good time,” or at least a “decent time.”
All said they were nervous and afraid of Ward.
He hugged Fallon “a little too tight” and told her she could be a porn star. He said he wanted to have sex with her when she turned 18, she said in court.
He could be violent, too, they said.
A “few days before” what prosecutors say was her murder, Ward choked her three times, Brittini’s sisters testified in court. He threw her on a bed once, they said, and got her water in between rounds of squeezing his hands around her neck. At one point, she foamed from the mouth.
He said he was “trying to get the demon out,” they testified.
Later that day, he dragged Brittini outside and down the stairs. He said they needed to walk around and get the demon to latch on to something else, like an animal, Carlie — one of the three sisters — said from the witness stand.
Fallon remembered hearing Brittini get pulled down the stairs outside their unit in Providence Court apartments.
“Stop, stop,” Fallon heard. “Get your hands off of me. Leave me alone, I’m not a demon.”
‘Get the demon out’
On May 5, 2010, Brittini died, but when exactly she died remains unknown, according to testimony.
When her sisters got home that Wednesday afternoon, Carlie checked her room. Brittini was in there, she said. She was facing the wall with blankets draped up to her shoulders. Unknown to Carlie, the blankets covered the bloody sheets.
“Brittini’s still sleeping,” Carlie told her mom when she got home.
They let her sleep. Nothing seemed off.
At 5:30 p.m. Dawn went to check on Brittini.
She said Brittini’s name, then called it a second time, and then screamed it, each sister testified.
After no response, the group filed in to her room and saw a pale, almost blue Brittini. She had a bruised neck and bloody underwear, photos show.
Ward knew what to do, he said confidently — even calmly — after they discovered her, the sisters recounted. The demon had her, he said, according to their testimony, they just needed to clean her up and help it get out.
Dawn and her kids followed his instruction. They got a bucket of water and towels and cleaned her legs. They dressed her in a new nightgown — grabbing it from the drawers where Ward would soon fill with his own clothes. They put new underwear on her and moved her off the bed.
Then they prayed.
Dawn then called the elders at her Kingdom Hall — where Jehovah’s Witnesses congregate. She said her daughter was possessed.
Later that night, they came to look at Brittini. Knowing Brittin’s history of mental illness, and thought she may be showing symptoms of her schizophrenia, said Richard Marshall, one of the elders.
An elder and a cop
During testimony, Marshall recounted when he knocked on 201’s door. Dawn answered, he said. Ward wasn’t far behind. He was eating in the kitchen.
It was Cinco de Mayo, Marshall remembered, and it was hot inside the three bedroom apartment in southeast Charlotte.
Ward inserted himself in Dawn and Marshall’s conversation and again said he knew “exactly what was going on.” He talked about demons, again, and said inappropriate things about children having sex, Marshall said.
When Ward asked him to elaborate during his cross examination, Marshall said he didn’t remember specifics.
Marshall did clearly remember going back to the room where Brittini lay.
He took her hand. It was cold, he told the courtroom, cold to the touch.
“This ain’t good” he said, he thought at the time.
Prosecutors Friday morning asked if he checked for a pulse. Marshall didn’t, he said, adding he didn’t know how.
Continuing with his testimony, Marshall told Dawn she should call 911. This seemed like a medical emergency, not something elders could address, he told her.
Paramedics, then police, then investigators soon came.
First it was a death investigation, then it was a homicide investigation.
On Friday afternoon, prosecutors continued to call Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department officers, detectives and analysts to the witness stand.
Their testimony is expected to detail how they eventually arrested Ward — and later Dawn.
Mother murder suspect
Dawn was charged with murder, concealing a death after the fact and incest in 2010. Testifying in court Thursday, Dawn said at some point before Brittini passed she and Ward started having sex.
In court, Dawn declined any willfully romantic or sexual relationship and said she felt she had to have sex with Ward. At one point, Ward called it a ritual, she said. The two were related, even if only by marriage.
Prosecutors dropped the incest and murder charge, and Dawn pleaded guilty to concealing a death after the fact. She served five months in prison and several years on probation. That November, she asked to have the charge expunged from her record.
A judge granted the request.
Family split down courtroom aisle
As Dawn and her daughters sat in the courtroom behind prosecutors’ desk, Ward’s mother, siblings and niece sat a few feet away — behind Ward’s desk.
Ward’s standby public defender, Michael Kabakoff, sat with them, instead of next to Ward, for most of the trial. Ward asked Kabakoff to move away from him after he suggested to the judge Ward was “suffering from his mental illness.”
Ward’s mother, who asked not to be named in her son’s publicized case, told the judge she had the same concerns.
Archie asserted he was mentally fit to stand trial, even if he was making questionable decisions.
Last October, Archie saw out the end of another murder trial with a defendant who was repeatedly found mentally ill.
Devalos Perkins — the 37-year-old who was the subject of The Charlotte Observer’s year-long investigation called “Purgatory” — was stuck in between hospital beds and jail cells for 11 years, continuously found unfit to stand trial, until Archie accepted his case. He pleaded guilty to a 2005 murder he was arrested for in 2012.
“If it wasn’t for Judge Archie,” Ward said in his opening arguments to the jury, “I’d still be rotting in jail... with my ‘innocent-until-proven-guilty’ chains and my ‘innocent-until-proven-guilty’ uniform.”
Kabakoff on Thursday asked the judge to consider limiting the amount of hearsay prosecutors’ witnesses were using. ward did not have enough knowledge of the law to know when to object.
Archie declined, saying that was the risk Ward took when he chose to represent himself.
Ward also declined to wear the suit his family brought him, opting instead to stay his orange Mecklenburg County Detention Center uniform with a faded “MCDC” on it.
North Carolina law prohibits any sheriff or jailer to force a defendant to wear such a uniform while on trial.
Archie reminded the jury that the jumpsuit and chains Ward opted to remain in did not imply guilt.
This story was originally published August 23, 2024 at 2:50 PM.
