HANOVER COUNTY, Va. (WRIC) — The woman accused of the brutal murder of a Hopewell cab driver has been found guilty.
A judge convicted 20-year-old Alisa Dejesus of murder, arson and abduction in Hanover Circuit court on Monday.
It was a difficult and graphic one-day trial.
The victim, 26-year-old James Wells was stabbed and then set on fire in August of 2014. His family was in the courtroom when the prosecutor showed autopsy photos of Wells’ badly burned body. But at the end of the day, the victim’s parents were relieved by the guilty verdict.
“It doesn’t bring him back, but just to know that she didn’t get away with murder,” explained James’ father David Wells.
Added the victim’s mother Mala Burton, “We got some justice. There’s some justice in the world.”
According to the prosecutor, Dejesus and her boyfriend Dyshawn Simpson hired Wells to drive them from Hopewell to Hanover.
When the couple couldn’t pay the fare, Simpson stabbed the victim then set him on fire with a road flare he found in the back of the taxi.
A medical examiner testified that Wells burned to death.
The victim’s emotional father was pained, “to hear her say that he suffered and he looked her in the face and asked her to please help and she didn’t.”
“I hope she gets life, that she pays for what she did,” added Burton.
Simpson is already serving a life sentence for the horrific killing.
Dejesus will be sentenced on March 21st.
