Tip from federal prisoner leads to arrest in year-old homicide of Raleigh cab driver

Investigators have made an arrest in the year-old shooting death of a popular cab driver after a federal prisoner contacted the FBI and led officials to a recently released fellow prisoner living in an area halfway house.

Investigators also learned that the suspect’s mother lived a short distance from where the cab driver, Nwabu Cyril Efobi, 56, was fatally shot in front of his job with Raleigh’s Universal Cab Co. at 432 Hill St., according to a cache of search warrants made public Friday at the Wake County Clerk of Courts Office.

Raleigh and Durham police arrested the suspect, Tyron Diontae Cooper, at his sister’s West Durham apartment in October, according to the search warrants. He was charged with murder, according to the Raleigh Police Department.

Efobi was a longtime driver and popular figure in the east Raleigh neighborhood where he worked, just across the street from the St. Augustine’s University campus. He was shot at about 6:20 p.m., Nov. 8, 2016, in front of the taxi station. Efobi, a native of Nigeria who moved to the United States to attend Shaw University, died at the scene, police reported.

In the shooting aftermath, investigators reviewed surveillance footage from a video system that monitored the strip mall where the cab station was located. The day before the shooting, a man wearing a hooded sweatshirt was seen behind the cab stand three times, but left without incident.

“It should be noted that no cabs are parked in front of the business and no employees were present during those three instances,” M. Quagliarello, a Raleigh detective, stated in the search warrant applications.

The next day, on Nov. 8, it was about 6 p.m. when the man was again captured on video walking behind the shopping center and cab company. In addition to the hooded sweatshirt, the man was wearing dark-rimmed glasses. He came around the building to the front at the same time Efobi was leaving out the front door after finishing work for the day.

Quagliarello said Efobi and the man got into a confrontation. The man shot the cab driver multiple times before running back around the building and fleeing the area.

Months passed without an arrest. Then, on Sept. 9, an FBI agent in Atlanta phoned Quagliarello and told him that a federal prisoner identified Cooper as the person responsible for Efobi’s death, according to one of the search warrants. The prisoner spelled out details about the case to the FBI agent that had not been made public, Quagliarello reported.

The detective later learned that Cooper was staying at a federal halfway house on Tryon Road and that he had a prior criminal history of robbery and firearms offenses, according to the search warrants.

Quagliarello visited the halfway house and discovered that Cooper had signed himself out on Nov. 7, 2016, and Nov. 8, 2016, under the pretense of working at a temporary labor company.

“Cooper did not work,” Quagliarello stated in the search warrant.

Officials at the halfway house also showed the detective a photo of Cooper that matched the physical description of the man seen in the surveillance footage. Investigators also obtained court orders that enabled them to determine which cellphone towers had serviced his cellphone. They concluded that based on his cellphone location, Cooper was in the Hill Street area at the time of the shooting. His mother lives in the 500 block of Edenton Street, according to the search warrant.

Cooper remained in custody Friday at the Wake County jail without benefit of bail, a jail spokesman reported.

This story was originally published December 1, 2017 at 5:49 PM with the headline "Tip from federal prisoner leads to arrest in year-old homicide of Raleigh cab driver."