Wake jury shown photos of bodies that were posed and posted on Facebook

Prosecutors on Wednesday showed members of a Wake County jury a crime scene picture of a mother and child whose bodies were posed, photographed and then posted on the accused murderer's Facebook page.

Wednesday marked the third day in the first-degree murder trial of Elhadji Seydou Diop, a 55-year-old man who has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder for the April 5, 2016 deaths of his wife, Aminata Drame, 40, and the couple’s 2-year-old daughter, Fatim Diop. Police say they were killed in their West Raleigh townhouse.

Police accused Diop of strangling his wife and daughter to death. During opening arguments Tuesday, defense attorneys Deonte Thomas and Charles Caldwell told the jury that Diop, a former long-distance truck driver, did not intend to kill his wife. They said the case was "a tragedy."

"Bad things happen very quickly," Caldwell said Wednesday afternoon. "They had a spat. It wasn't a knockdown, drag out fight."

Police found Drame and Fatim Diop's bodies at the bottom of a narrow, burgundy-carpeted staircase in the townhouse's basement. The mother and child were both on their backs, facing one another. Aminata Drame's arm was underneath her daughter.

Wake prosecutor Lorrin Freeman said both sides agree the victims' bodies were moved and then posed, but she declined during a late morning trial break to say where in the home the slayings took place.

Hope Bruehl, an agent with the City County Bureau of Identification, said the bodies were in a state of rigor mortis and had been in that position "for quite some time," adding that "typically, it takes 12 hours for rigor mortis to set in."

Bruehl told the court that she arrived at the townhouse after 11 p.m. Her first stop was to WakeMed, where paramedics rushed Diop for emergency treatment after he apparently tried to kill himself by slashing his throat and cutting both his wrists.

Diop was conscious at about 10 p.m. when Bruehl visited the room where doctors were stitching up his neck wound. She said Diop agreed to be photographed.

"He was propped up on his back with pillows behind him," said Bruehl, telling the court that there was blood on the blanket that covered Diop. His swollen left eye was closed shut, with dried blood underneath both eyes.

Diop's right wrist was bloodied by several horizontal cuts. Medical officials had already treated his left wrist and covered it with gauze.

Another witness, Mamadou Ndoye, who is Diop's nephew, said his uncle had physically slowed down in recent years because of the effects of Parkinson's disease and was out of work as a consequence.

Ndoye broke down in tears describing to the court how Parkinson's disease had affected Diop so badly there was talk among family members of sending him back to Africa.

"He couldn't even talk on the phone. He was like this," said Ndoye, who picked up a Styrofoam cup and started trembling to demonstrate his uncle's actions.

Ndoye's testimony offered an inkling of what may been the source of a marital dispute before the mother and daughter's deaths.

Ndoye said that on the day of the slayings, Aminata Drame, who family members called "Amy," phoned him at about 10:49 a.m. and asked him to talk to her husband about getting a job to help around the house.

Ndoye promised Drame he would call her husband after he got off work at 12:30 p.m. Ndoye texted his uncle at 2:18 p.m. When Diop didn't immediately respond, Ndoye called him at 3:29 p.m.

"He said, 'give me two minutes. I have to fix something in the house. I will call you back," Ndoye said.

An autopsy report made public in July 2016 indicated that a confrontation between Diop and his wife had already ended tragically.

“According to information received, Fatim Diop, a 2-year-old girl, was present during a physical altercation between two adults when they landed on top of her on 4/5/2016 around noon,” the autopsy report stated.

“Afterward, she was reportedly not breathing, but Emergency Medical Services were not called," the report concluded.

Diop appeared in Wake County Superior Court in late September of last year and rejected a plea agreement that would have allowed him to avoid a trial. Instead, Diop entered pleas of not guilty to two counts of first-degree murder.

Police officers went to the family’s home after Diop’s niece, who lives in Dakar, Senegal, saw photos of the dead bodies of Drame and Fatim that Diop had apparently posted on his Facebook page.

According to the Senegalese online newspaper DakarFLASH.com, Diop had also written on his Facebook page, “They just died, and I will be next. Who will stop me?”

After seeing the photos, Diop’s niece called her husband, who lives in New York City, according to a 911 recording made public shortly after the victims were found.

The husband called 911 in New York, and a dispatcher there contacted Wake County’s 911 center.

This story was originally published March 21, 2018 at 5:27 PM with the headline "Wake jury shown photos of bodies that were posed and posted on Facebook."