Homaira Rahman’s Killer, Ehsan Amin goes to Court: details of murder released

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 4, 2008; Page B06

Just hours after the body of Homaira Rahman was found on a sidewalk in the Vienna area in July, police found the man she sometimes dated lying on a gurney at Inova Fairfax Hospital. When investigators asked Ehsan Amin why he was there, he said, “Something bad happened.”

Detective Steve Shillingford testified yesterday that he asked Amin what he meant, and Amin said, “I think I beat her. I didn’t mean to do it. I loved her so much.”

Amin was charged in a warrant that day with murder, and, after a preliminary hearing yesterday in Fairfax General District Court, Judge Penney J. Azcarate sent the case to the grand jury for possible indictment.

Ian M. Rodway, chief deputy commonwealth’s attorney, said at the hearing that Rahman, 25, had been stabbed 91 times with scissors and had been beaten on the face and bitten on the arm. Police found a broken pair of scissors not far from her body, which was discovered on a sidewalk in a cul-de-sac in the 2300 block of Malraux Drive.

Rahman lived about a half-mile away, in the 8700 block of Litwalton Court, and a neighbor testified that she saw Rahman and Amin arguing in the street there shortly before midnight July 3. “She looked distraught,” Mary Just said.

Earlier that night, Rahman and some friends had attended a soccer game in Woodbridge. One of the friends, Zarlacht Osmanzoi, said Amin repeatedly phoned Rahman at the game. “She was afraid. He was threatening her,” Osmanzoi testified. She said that as Rahman left the game, “she was crying; she said she was afraid.”

Rahman graduated from George Mason University in 2005 and worked in the financial industry. She was of Afghan descent and was active in the Afghan American community.

A man out for a walk on the morning of July 4 found her body. She was fully clothed, and her purse was nearby.

Shillingford said he and Detective Chester Toney took out Rahman’s cellphone and later learned that someone in Woodbridge had called it repeatedly. That led them to Amin, and a family member of his told the detectives that Amin was at the hospital after having been in a car accident.

Amin had a cut on his neck and on his hand, both self-inflicted, Shillingford said. Shillingford said he discreetly slid a small tape recorder onto the gurney above Amin’s head and recorded his comments.

“Something bad happened,” he said Amin told him. Shillingford asked what he meant, and Amin said, “My girlfriend was arguing with me; she was cursing me out, and something bad happened. I think I beat her.”

Shillingford said he asked, “Did you stab her?” He said Amin responded, “With what?” Shillingford said, “That’s what I’m asking you.” He said Amin replied, “She had scissors, but I don’t want to talk about it.” That scissors had been found near the body was not publicly known.