John Jefferson
Brendon Devon White, bottom inset, faces a murder charge in the death of Taty’ana Zakiyyah Cooks, top inset. (Crime scene screenshot and mug shot from Newport News Police via WRC/YouTube; Victim’s photo from GoFundMe)
A Virginia man is accused of strangling a mother, stuffing her body in a suitcase and dumping it in a trash truck that investigators intercepted before it made its way to a landfill.
Brendon Devon White, 28, faces a murder charge in the death of Taty’ana Zakiyyah Cooks, 30. After a court hearing on Wednesday, the victim’s father, Saquan Ir-Rahman, chastised the defendant in an interview with local NBC affiliate WRC.
“What you did to her, you went overboard with her,” he told the network, adding that he passed by the dumpster she was in while he searched for her back in March. “I had walked around the parking lot, you know, crying and stuff, but she was in that dumpster I walked past twice.”
The case came to light after family members were worried Cooks hadn’t picked up her toddler from day care and reported it to the police. Officers responded on March 21 at 8:49 p.m. to her home in the 12200 block of Stevenson Court in Woodbridge to investigate, police said in a news release. Woodbridge is around 20 miles southwest of Washington, D.C.
Suspicions were raised when police found Cooks’ belongings inside the home, but her car was missing.
Detectives found her body in a trash truck that they pulled over during their investigation the following day, authorities said. Citing charging documents, Prince William Times reported Cooks’ body was found in a suitcase.
Authorities learned White had been driving Cooks’ car in Newport News, Virginia, more than 150 miles southeast of her home, and took him into custody, authorities said.
Cooks’ aunt, Cassandra Cooks, told the Times that White lived with her even though they had broken up.
“They weren’t together,” she said. “She was trying to help him out, but he knew he had to find someplace else to live. She was trying to help somebody, and this is what happened.”
On GoFundMe, the victim’s family said she was an amazing mother, daughter, sister, niece and friend.
“Taty’ana was a fun loving beautiful person,” the page said.
The page said she was overjoyed to be a mother. Her “exquisite soul brought joy to whomever she came in contact with,” the page said.
The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press reporter Peter Dujardin wrote that White faced felony charges years earlier in a domestic violence case against another woman who had a protective order against him. The case never went to trial after the victim failed to show up to court.
“I was planning on killing you all day anyway,” White allegedly told the woman, the newspaper reported, citing the November 2018 complaint. “Write your own suicide note and make it easier on me.”
After Cooks was killed, the woman said she regretted not going forward with her case, saying she couldn’t make it to court during a difficult time in an abusive relationship with another man then.
“I wish I would have gone to court and testified,” the woman told the Virginian-Pilot in March. “I do wish I would have put him in jail at the time that he was definitely supposed to go.”
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