Alexandria police are investigating their fifth suspicious death this year, after 2006 saw the lowest crime rate in 40 years.
Paul Zibi-Melingui, 22, was charged with second-degree murder Monday after his half-sister was found dead in a storage area of her home, according to a statement. An autopsy was performed on Sophie S. Mani-Mbaga’s body Monday, but a cause of death has not been determined, police Lt. Jamie Bartlett said.
Police searched the family’s townhouse at 3824 Usher Court, off Duke Street on Sunday evening after the victim’s stepmother reported her missing.
The 19-year-old victim, a native of Cameroon, attended nursing school, Bartlett said. Her stepmother and Zibi-Melingui, also Cameroonian, both worked at the World Bank, he said.
The four suspicious deaths Alexandria police investigated earlier this year were ruled homicides. Most recently, Nathan Lee, 31, and Mark Collins, 28, were shot April 19 beside the Samuel Madden housing project. The men were victims of Alexandria’s first double homicide in 13 years.
The city sees fewer than six homicides annually. There were five in 2006. Since ahigh of seven in 1998, there had been no more than four annually until last year. Alexandria’s population grew 5.5 percent between 2000 and 2005, according to federal census figures.
Bartlett said the most recent homicide is “one more than we had at this point last year.”
“This doesn’t take us over any record,” he said.
Alexandria police removed one of the 2007 homicide investigations from their statistics, after detectives determined that a February homicide occurred in Dumfries. The body of 21-year-old Anna Sherman was found in a trash bin behind an apartment complex in the 5300 block of Holmes Run Parkway in a case that has been turned over to Prince William County prosecutors.
