Verdict: Teen convicted of murder and arson in September riverside homicide

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WANE) — An Allen County jury Friday found Nasir Owens, 18, guilty of murder and arson in the September homicide of Austin Seiman, killed in an alley off from South Lafayette and dragged and thrown into the Maumee River. at the Tecumseh Bridge.

Owens, whose street name was “Flint,” and his friend, Dimitrius Walker, 19, charged but not convicted of the murder, were seen by a witness getting out of a blue 2010 Hyundai Sonata and physically assaulting Seiman in the alley, before One of them returned to the car, pulled out a gun and shot the victim nine times, according to Tom Chaille, chief deputy district attorney, and Tesa Helge, chief counsel for the district attorney's office of Allen County.

Although the witness was not able to absolutely identify the two men who were both wearing black hooded sweatshirts, Owens' cell phone was traced to that location at the time of Seiman's disappearance. More damning were the texts Owens sent to the victim as the two men waited in the alley.

“Come here,” Owens told him in a text, according to evidence presented in court.

Chaille and Helge pointed to the mounting evidence — camera surveillance of neighbors and city streets, text messages between the two and cellphone mapping that place Owens at the crime scene and at the Tecumseh Bridge. Then his phone died.

If the two men — Walker goes on trial next month — had just left Seiman in the alley, the shooting might not have been solved, prosecutors said Friday during closing arguments.

But the two men returned to collect Seiman's body and place it in a black bag, then drove to the bridge, investigators said. They dragged Seiman under the bridge, his bare back scraped and bruised from the effort, according to court testimony. They spent about half an hour on the bridge, according to their cellphone mapping, and Helge assumed they were trying to sink the body.

But two days later, Seiman, discovered by a kayaker, was moored at the edge of the river. Crime scene photos presented to the jury showed a sleeping body, not deeply decomposed or bloated by water.

A charm from one of Seiman's neck chains was left on the sidewalk and helped detectives recreate the tale, Helge said. And a bloody white T-shirt, later tested for DNA and returned to Seiman, was left in the alley.

A few minutes after 11 p.m., a surveillance camera captured the Hyundai Sonata at the Standish Drive home where Owens lived with his mother.

Here, Owens and his accomplice are seen removing the Sonata's license plate on this rainy night, with one wiping his hand in the grass as he works.

There must have been a decision that the car should be destroyed, perhaps too much bloody evidence to dispose of before Walker, once again the sole accused, had to return it to his mother, Helge suggested.

Two cars leave the Standish residence, Owens' mother's Sonata and Chevy Traverse. They headed to the 3100 block of Smith Street where again, in an alley, a half hour after midnight on September 27, there was an explosion that shook this car, particularly damaging the rear where Helge said that the body was placed. A gasoline can similar to the one found at the Walker residence was recovered at the scene.

What could have been the motive? “For next to nothing,” Helge suggested. Court documents indicated Seiman may have been involved in a drug transaction.

Defense attorney Jerad Marks criticized the eyewitness account. “Whatever he saw, you couldn’t positively identify Owens or his friend,” he said.

And cell phone mapping can't pinpoint an exact location, even though the state has presented the route the phone took. A firearm was missing from the scene and police found “no shell casings or projectiles.”

“We don't know when the body will be laid out…” Marks said, and the prosecution “assumed that this gold charm must have a pendant.”

“We know that Nasir Owens was with Dimitrius Walker at this gas station two hours ago,” Chaille said in response, referring to an earlier video taken at a Marathon gas station at Hanna and Lewis streets where the two men are went to get Walker's mom a Sprite.

Put Owens in the center of a Venn diagram and every piece of evidence includes him, Chaille said.

“Just be strong,” Owens’ mother told him days later at the prison when he called her on the prison’s monitored phone line. She read him the probable cause and he did not deny the facts, Chaille added.

“That’s who he was that night,” Chaille said. “We are here because of who he was that night.”

Owens turned 18 on Oct. 3, the day he was arrested and arrested, according to his mother, Sharonda Biggs, who sat in the courtroom. Barely an adult, Owens wore a suit and tie he has yet to grow into during the trial and Friday, when the jury read its verdict.

His sentencing date has not yet been announced.