'Your choice destroyed this family': Man gets life for killing ex-girlfriend

The defendant spent 13 minutes telling the court how much he loved the victim, how much he loved her family, how grateful he was to have been a part of it.

And how he never intended to kill her.

But that statement, read from handwritten notes that went on for pages and pages, stood in stark contrast to the evidence at trial — that Terrence Washington fired seven shots at Makeida Thompson, with four of them striking her in the back of the head.

In front of their 1-year-old son and the defendant’s own mother and grandmother.

Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Beth A. Lazzara, who had listened to a lengthy statement from Thompson’s mother in which she described urging her daughter not to date Washington, was unmoved by Washington’s words.

“You say that you’re sorry for their loss,” the judge began. “This family hasn’t lost someone. You took from them. You did, sir. You did that through a cold-blooded, intentional, heinous act.

“Your choice destroyed this family.”

The judge then sentenced Washington to serve the rest of his life in prison with no chance for parole — the mandatory penalty for first-degree murder.

Lazzara called it an “unsatisfying” penalty.

“May God have mercy on your soul, sir,” the judge concluded. “I’m not sure anyone else in this courtroom will.”

Guilty

According to testimony at trial, Washington, 41, and Thompson, 32, of Clairton, had broken up but still had a son together.

On Nov. 10, 2020, Washington asked Thompson to meet him at his mother’s house in East Liberty.

Thompson, a juvenile probation officer, had filed a protection from abuse petition against Washington five days earlier, prompting angry text messages from him.

“‘That’s the last time you’re going to say child support and custody to me,’” Washington wrote in one.

Although Thompson was wary of the meeting — even asking if it was a set-up — she went anyway, prosecutors said.

As the two sat together talking that morning — as their son bounced with his great-grandmother and watched television — Washington pulled out a gun and fired seven times, police said.

“‘That’s what you get for messing with me,’” he said before fleeing.

Washington was arrested in Seattle a month later.

His attorney conceded at trial in March that his client killed Thompson but argued it was self-defense. Thompson had a firearm with her that day that she carried in a holster for work. However, testimony showed her gun was not out at the time of the shooting and was only found later by a first responder.

The jury deliberated for three hours before finding Washington guilty of premeditated murder.

‘I let her hand go’

At Wednesday’s sentencing hearing, the victim’s older sister described having had a falling-out with Thompson two years before her death — over Washington.

But, Dawnisha Thompson said, just a few weeks before the shooting, the two women made up. They hugged and kissed and talked and reconnected.

Then she learned her sister was killed.

“All I could do was cry and ask why?” Dawnisha Thompson said. “Why didn’t I mend our relationship sooner?”

The final witness for the prosecution was the victim’s mother.

Robin Payne stood before the court and passed up photographs showing her daughter’s three sons.

She described how Makeida’s father came up with her name — Makeida, she said, is from the Queen of Sheba in Africa.

“Because a queen is who she is,” Payne said. She then paused to correct herself. “Was.”

She told the court her daughter was her best friend, that they talked every day.

She was intelligent, loved sports and was a go-getter.

Her father had taught her to be independent — to change a tire or charge a car battery. To change a fuse in a house.

Makeida was a good mother, teaching her boys to love sports and always keeping them well-dressed.

“She had everything going for her,” Payne said.

But when she first met Washington, she continued, she urged her daughter not to date him.

“‘I don’t like him for you,’” she said. Makeida responded, “‘Mom, not this time. You have to stop picking my boyfriends. He’s OK, mom. He just wants to be loved, and I want to show him.’”

Payne said that Washington, who always dressed in suits, appeared to want to control her daughter.

She saw red flags — that even though Makeida had her own belongings that Washington got her new things to replace them.

He also got her daughter a goat as a pet, which she found dead in the basement one day, Payne said.

“We are a very loving family,” she said. “But none of us were very sure about him.”

Although they tried to welcome Washington into their family, Payne said, it was hard.

He deceived her daughter, Payne continued, and she tried to convince her to leave him. But then they had a baby, who Payne is now raising.

“How do I explain his mother was killed at the hands of his father?” she asked. “What was you thinking? How was that the answer? She had three sons. Now, today, the baby calls me mommy.”

As Payne continued, her voice got louder until she was sobbing into the microphone. “My God, I let her hand go, and I don’t have her anymore.”

‘The unforgivable’

As Washington began his statement, he told the court he originally planned to plead guilty and save Thompson’s family the trauma of a trial.

“I’m beyond devastated by this,” he said. “I’m full of remorse, sympathy and empathy.”

He asked the family for forgiveness.

But then Washington began talking about the trial — the prosecution attempting to put in crime scene photos he thought were inappropriate and what he called their “dirty tactics.”

Lazzara stopped him.

“We’re not talking about whether you’re guilty,” she said. “That has no bearing at this point in time.”

The court’s warning prompted Washington to skip several pages of the statement he wrote the night before.

“I loved her,” he finally continued. “I love her. I love our family.”

Washington said he had no reason to shoot Thompson if he hadn’t been provoked.

He then addressed, by name, several members of the family, including her parents.

“I’ve done the unforgivable,” he said. “I understand that.

“I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to make this right if you’ll let me.”