Dying Raleigh woman lay in motel doorway. Many passed her by without calling 911.
In April 2018, a woman lay in the doorway of her east Raleigh motel room, face beaten bloody, struggling on the floor while disinterested people walked past.
Nadia Brichikov, 48, died that morning at the open door of room 241 of the Knights Inn — a motel Raleigh police say they visited daily, well-known for drugs and prostitution. The blows to her head were so severe that officers identified her by the grapevine tattoo on her right arm.
On Tuesday, her husband Mark Brichikov went on trial for murder, accused of beating her to death in the New Bern Avenue room they shared on a drug-fueled night.
Few facts are disputed. What this case will decide is whether Brichikov died from the blows to her head or from the fentanyl in her system.
“What you’re about to see is nothing like what’s on television,” Assistant Wake County District Attorney Mark Stevens told jurors. “This is not a whodunit.”
Both victim and defendant were drug addicts before they met and married in 2015 inside the same courthouse where Mark Brichikov now stands trial, said Michael Howell, his attorney. Brichikov favored crack cocaine; his wife, heroin.
“The background of this case is a sad story,” Howell said.
In January 2018, they began staying at the Knights Inn, now known as Budgetel. By March, they couldn’t pay the bills, Howell said, so Brichikov went to The Healing Place for people struggling with addiction while his wife turned to the streets.
After a stint in jail for drug possession, Nadia Brichikov became a police informant but supported herself through prostitution, Howell said. The couple agreed to reunite at the Knights Inn in April, which turned out to be Nadia Brichikov’s final night, when she bought drugs and Mark Brichikov relapsed.
Video cameras showed Brichikov leaving his wife’s room shortly after 4 a.m., then going upstairs to knock on a door and tell the guests there either “241” or “911,” a message garbled by the hour and the defendant’s state of mind.
He then fled the scene and took his employer’s truck, which had a credit card inside, and fled to Wilmington, where he was arrested.
Medical examiners said every bone in Nadia Brichikov’s face was broken, Stevens said. The furniture had been turned over inside the room and she was tangled inside a chair.
Raleigh police officer Gregory Modetz was first on the scene, and after watching footage of the room’s events, the case sticks in his mind.
“There was a lot of people who saw the victim lying on the ground and no one called 911,” he said.
“That was disturbing to you?” Stevens asked.
“Yes,” he said.
This story was originally published December 3, 2019 at 3:20 PM.