NEWPORT NEWS — Imani Parrish’s 10-year-old son had a strange feeling when his mom wasn’t responding to his calls and texts in the afternoon of April 30.
“He felt that something wasn’t right,” said the boy’s maternal grandmother, Nichole Parrish. “They normally FaceTimed together when he got home from school.”
But Nichole had a key to her daughter’s apartment, on Antrim Drive, off Adams and Dresden drives in Midtown Newport News.
So just before 9 p.m. that evening, Nichole enlisted her longtime partner, Mavion Willis, to check on Imani. The 10-year-old went too, but stayed in the car — luckily as it turned out.
Imani didn’t answer her door, but Willis went inside and found “drag marks” leading to a bedroom closet.
He opened the closet door and found his stepdaughter — a woman he helped to raise — motionless and wrapped in a heavily bloodied comforter.
The 28-year-old was already dead, with blunt force trauma to the head and severe injuries to her face. Willis called 911. “I’m glad I didn’t discover her like that,” Nichole said.
About six weeks later, police contend that Imani Parrish’s live-in boyfriend, David Gregory Anderson, bludgeoned her to death that afternoon with the ceramic cover to a toilet bowl tank.
“Ceramic shards, consistent with the composition of the toilet tank lid, were found embedded in the victim’s eye and hair,” according to a police affidavit that cited a state autopsy report.
Anderson, 30, of Newport News, was arrested Monday and charged with first-degree murder in Parrish’s slaying.
Nichole Parrish said Wednesday that her daughter and Anderson knew each other “since their teenage years” and lived together for about a year and a half.
The affidavit, filed in Newport News Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court this week, outlines the following series of alleged events based on witness testimony, surveillance footage and recovered evidence.
Imani Parrish began seeing another man a few weeks before the slaying, according to witnesses quoted in the affidavit.
That man told police that Parrish told him she was planning to move out of the Newport News apartment to her own place — and “had made it clear that Anderson was not coming with her.”
On the morning of April 30, Anderson texted one of Parrish’s friends just before 8:30 a.m., asking if she had seen her. That friend would later tell detectives that Parrish had “started a new relationship with a male she was very excited about.”
When Anderson finally reached Parrish later that morning, he demanded to know where she had been. A neighbor told police he saw Anderson “pacing” outside the Newport News apartment about 11 a.m., “on the phone yelling and appearing agitated.”
The man whom Parrish had recently begun seeing told police she left his place about 11:30 a.m. that Wednesday morning after spending the night with him in Portsmouth.
It wasn’t clear where Parrish went next, but Flock Safety cameras in Newport News showed her arriving in the area of the Antrim Drive apartment just before 1 p.m.
The other man told police he was “texting back and forth” with Parrish until 1:26 p.m., after which “he never got another response.”
After Parrish’s son couldn’t reach her when he got home from school later that afternoon, Willis went to her apartment that evening and made the discovery.
Detectives immediately noticed that the toilet bowl’s tank cover was missing from the bloodied bathroom, with investigators soon finding the broken lid in an outdoor trash bin.
Also in the bin were bloody clothes — white sneakers, a white tank top and black pants with one of Anderson’s debit cards in a pocket. Police said Anderson was seen wearing identical clothes at a local convenience store the same morning.
Another witness told police he watched a man putting a TV into a car outside the Antrim Drive address about 4 p.m. that day.
From there, police said, Anderson drove Parrish’s car to Mario’s Pawn Shop on Jefferson Avenue and pawned a 55-inch Vizio TV and a Bluetooth speaker. The affidavit said blood spatters were found on the TV and inside the car.
Nichole Parrish said Imani graduated from Hampton High School in 2015 and worked as a painter at Newport News Shipbuilding for about nine years.
She was known at the shipyard “for her hard work ethics, bright smile and the many friendships she formed throughout her years there,” said that called her son “the center of her world.”
Parrish created custom T-Shirts, made music playlists for family gatherings, and loved spending time with friends and family, the obituary said. “Imani will be remembered for her natural beauty, infectious smile, kindness, strength and the love she gave so freely.”
Court records filed with Anderson’s arrest this week say he previously worked at Newport News Public Schools. He is being held without bond at the Newport News City Jail, with a court hearing scheduled for July 3.
Anderson was arrested on a charge of assaulting a different woman in September 2019 after he questioned her about her whereabouts. The count was dropped in 2021 following a deferred finding.
Anderson was set to go to trial this year in a 2023 Newport News armed robbery case. But court records show the charge was dropped on April 23 — a week before Parrish’s slaying.
When asked how her grandson is is taking what happened to his mother, Nichole Parrish replied: “Better than I am.”
Peter Dujardin, 757-897-2062, pdujardin@dailypress.com
