Trial begins for man accused of killing Swissvale mother and 7-year-old daughter

Joan Campbell expected her daughter, a nurse, to stop by to see her the night of Feb. 14, 2023, so she could check on her.

But Megan J. Campbell never showed.

The next morning, at 6:22 a.m., Megan, who usually had an upbeat voice, called her mom.

She sounded somber.

“Her voice, her voice …,” Joan Campbell recounted on the witness stand Tuesday.

Megan, 39, told her mother that she and her 7-year-old daughter had tried to visit the night before. But the man who had been living with her as a boarder, Kareef Easington, who was driving, pulled over before they got there.

“She said ‘he dragged me out of the car to the bushes and was strangling me,’” Joan Campbell testified. “‘Lyla was screaming.’”

Then, Megan told her mother that Easington took her car keys and wouldn’t give them back.

The last words she ever heard her daughter say — directed to Easington, her mom said — were “‘get the [expletive] hell out of my house.’”

Less than four hours later, police found Megan and Lyla dead in their Swissvale apartment.

Easington, 36, of Swissvale was quickly identified as a suspect. He was arrested three days later.

His jury trial, on two counts of criminal homicide and tampering with evidence, began Tuesday before Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Kevin G. Sasinoski.

Swissvale police Sgt. William Hahn was the first witness called by the prosecution. He told the jury that he was dispatched to Sailor Place Apartments that morning for a welfare check at 9:06 a.m.

Hahn said there was no answer at the apartment they were sent to, and when he finally made contact with a male there, he denied calling 911, so Hahn left.

But he was called back to the apartment a short time later. That time, first responders made contact with the building manager who was able to cross-reference the number that had called 911 with the apartment building records.

It went back to Megan Campbell. They then went to her apartment, No. 9, and tried to enter, Hahn said.

The chain lock was on the door, he continued, and there was a chair, with a heavy weight on it, barricading the door.

The police called Campbell’s mother, who was listed as her emergency contact, and she gave permission for them to enter.

Hahn’s body camera footage showed the moment he broke in the door.

“Megan, you in here?” Hahn called through the door. “Megan, your mother wants us to break the door. Megan, it’s the Swissvale police. We’re going to break through the door to check your welfare.”

He knocked the door in and toppled the chair.

Hahn first found Megan Campbell’s body in the hallway under a comforter. Officers didn’t find Lyla’s body, which was also under a comforter on her bed, for about 10 minutes. At first, they thought she might have been at school, but when they contacted the school, officers learned she hadn’t shown up that morning.

Hahn also testified that the sliding glass door to the balcony was open when he got inside the residence, and there appeared to be footprints below as if someone had jumped off.

During opening statements Tuesday, Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Berosh asked the jurors to pay close attention to the surveillance footage that they will see during the trial — particularly the clothes the suspect was wearing, where he was wearing them and when.

But defense attorney Keith Emerick, in his opening, said that Easington’s arrest came as a result of confirmation bias.

Emerick told the jury that he would show them flawed evidence, tainted witness testimony, as well as leads that police ignored and failed to investigate.

That, he concluded, would give the jurors enough reasonable doubt to find his client not guilty.

Although Berosh called seven other witnesses Tuesday afternoon, it was Joan Campbell who spent the most time on the stand. She will return for cross-examination on Wednesday.

During her testimony, Joan Campbell described sending her son to the apartment that morning to check on her daughter after first responders had gotten permission to go inside.

“‘Did you get there?’” she asked him on the phone.

“He said, ‘Mom, Megan and Lyla is dead.’ The scream, the scream that I let out,” Joan Campbell recounted. “All I could think of was Lyla, my grandbaby, my only grandchild was dead.”

“I’m the one who had to close her casket. My God.”

During Joan Campbell’s testimony, Berosh asked her if she could identify Easington. A slight woman, Joan Campbell stood up at the witness stand to look down at the defense table.

“Yes, he’s right there,” she said, pointing at him.

Berosh also asked Joan Campbell to listen to all three 911 calls that investigators said Easington made that morning.

The first, at 9:06 a.m., lasted 1 minute and 33 seconds.

“I just need to talk to somebody, I guess,” the man told the call taker.

“About what?” the woman responded. “Talk to me.”

The man, who refused to identify himself, gave the address of Sailor Place Apartments but gave a different apartment number.

“Will you just send someone, please?” the caller asked.

He again refused to say why and hung up.

Twenty-six minutes later, the same man called again. That call was only 35 seconds.

Then, at 9:34 a.m., the man called again. That time, he told the call taker that he was having a heart attack, and then later changed it to his brother was having a heart attack.

He gave a different apartment number — but the same address. He again refused to give his name.

That call ended after nearly three minutes.

In each call, the deep voice was exceedingly polite, repeatedly calling the operator “‘ma’am.’”

Joan Campbell formally identified the caller after each recording played.

“Kareef Antonio Geor Easington.”