Man Charged With Killing Teen Girl Right Before She Was Scheduled to Testify Against Him for Rape

After Mujey Dumbuya, a 16-year-old girl from Kalamazoo, Michigan was found dead under suspicious circumstances in February, her alleged rapist Quinn James was a person of interest, given Dumbuya was set to testify against him in court for rape. Now, James has been charged with murdering Dumbuya as well as kidnapping and conspiracy.

The New York Times reports that prosecutors found that forensic testing “ties James to the victim’s clothing” and that he lied to investigators about where he was the day that Dumbuya was reportedly taken and killed. They also have evidence placing James close to the Dumbuya’s home the night before she went missing.

James was initially arrested in November 2017 after Dumbuya told Kalamazoo police that he had raped her multiple times starting when she was fifteen. She was going to testify at the proceedings scheduled for April and James was ordered to have zero contact with her before then. But James was released on $100,000 bail in late November or early December according to the NYT, an amount that was deemed substantial at the time. When he was then arrested for Dumbuya’s murder that bail was increased to $250,000.

Dumbuya’s mother, Fatmata Corneh, said to James in a statement given to the Times: “You have no idea what you have put me and my family through. You broke us into pieces.”