John Jefferson
Left: Asia Cowell (Facebook). Right: Devin Albritton (Newport News Police Department).
A Virginia man will spend decades in prison for taking part in the 2020 kidnapping and murder of a teen lured to a home with a ruse of doing hair styling work but who was shot dead in the woods to keep her from testifying against a man accused of trying to rape her.
Devin Albritton, 44, was sentenced on Friday to 50 years in prison, with 11 years suspended, for the murder of Asia Cowell, 17, online court records show. Albritton, who was one of three defendants, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. His wife, Crystal Ashley Rudy Albritton, 34, was sentenced to life in prison last month after she pleaded guilty to the same charge in March. Dazha Feaster, the then 17-year-old sister of the man Cowell had been set to testify against in the sexual assault case, is set for a plea hearing in the murder on Oct. 30, online court records show.
Newport News Circuit Court Judge Christopher Papile minced no words about the horror of the crime, local ABC affiliate WVEC reported.
“This was senseless, but we do know the motive,” Papile said, the outlet reported. “I don’t believe it could be more depraved or grotesque.”
Cowell, he added, “was more than brutally murdered. She was executed.”
Cowell’s stepmother, Tuwanna Simmons, said the sentence wasn’t long enough, telling WVEC, “We can never get Asia back again.”
The defendant apologized at sentencing.
“It shouldn’t have happened,” the outlet reported he read from a statement. “Once I found out what they did, I couldn’t keep up their lies. I want people who don’t know me to have mercy on me.”
The events leading to the bloodshed started when Cowell was dropped off at a Norfolk apartment on Sept. 7, 2020, “to do the resident’s hair,” The Virginian-Pilot reported, citing court documents.
Citing court documents, WTKR reported that Crystal Albritton had set up a hair appointment with Cowell on Instagram.
At the apartment, Cowell was subdued, put into a vehicle and driven to a wooded area in Newport News, where she was walked into the woods, court documents said. At one point, Crystal Albritton “told Asia Cowell to stop” and told Feaster to shoot Cowell, but Feaster hesitated, the documents said.
“After attempting to convince Dazha Feaster to hurry up, Crystal Albritton took the gun and shot Asia Cowell herself,” according to the complaint.
WTKR reported that Crystal Albritton told the victim to turn around and shot her in the back of the head after the victim begged for her life and promised not to testify in the sexual assault trial.
Newport News police responding to a call on Sept. 23 about a dead person in the woods behind commercial buildings in the 16000 block of Warwick Boulevard found Cowell’s body, the agency said in a news release. That December, the three defendants were arrested, authorities said.
Devin Albritton disposed of Cowell’s cellphone and the murder weapon and was preparing for a cookout a few hours later, WVEC reported.
After Cowell died, prosecutors dropped the sexual assault case in which Cowell had been set to testify.
“As we’d been notified Ms. Cowell was deceased, the preliminary hearing did not go forward,” Amanda Howie, a spokeswoman for the Norfolk Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office, told the local newspaper, the Daily Press.
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