In the days after Selina Knight broke up with her boyfriend, she was subject to verbal and emotional attacks and threats. On March 5 the attacks were over: Knight was dead. Her body was found in her apartment by friends worried that they hadn’t been able to reach her.
That’s according to an arrest warrant signed this week for Knight’s boyfriend, 49 year old Keith Littlepage-El. He was arrested Thursday and on Friday was presented with a first degree murder charge for Knight’s stabbing death.
Authorities believe that Knight’s death was the culmination of at least two weeks of threats and attacks, including two burglaries on her southeast D.C. apartment, one of which, the same day that Knight was killed, D.C. police officers responded to.
Those officers noted derogatory graffiti scrawled on the apartment’s refrigerator, doors and walls.
“Bitch you gave me HIV,” officers reported the graffiti said.
Late that night, after Knight was found stabbed to death, her body covered with a blanket on a loveseat, detectives recorded similar graffiti “on several walls and on appliances,” according to the arrest warrant.
Knight and Littlepage had known each other for twenty years and had lived together since October 2010, when Littlepage was released from prison, according to the charging documents. Knight, however, “had become frustrated and tired of [Littlepage’s] erratic and controlling behavior” and was breaking up with him, a witness told investigators.
Defense attorneys argued against Littlepage’s detainment Friday afternoon, saying that there is no direct evidence in the case, no weapon was recovered, there is no record of Littlepage being at the apartment that night and that he has made no incriminating statements.
Despite those arguments, Littlepage was ordered held on probable cause, the judge telling attorneys that though the case is “completely circumstantial” it is “entirely compelling.” A preliminary hearing date was set for March 31 in front of Judge Thomas Motley.
