The life of Melia Jones — or MJ, as she liked to be called — was pointed to as a success story.
The 23-year-old with Down syndrome was living on her own for the first time and working. Her teachers at the Pulley Career Center in Fairfax County looked to her as an example of what was possible.
"Melia was just a ray of sunshine always, and she just brought hope and laughter and lightness and just pure joy every day," Melissa Bindocci of Pulley Center said.
Many of her teachers were in tears Thursday as Jones’ killer was sentenced to three consecutive life prison terms. Her father watched, too.
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David Cunningham was convicted of sexually assaulting and killing Jones, his neighbor.
Jones’ father found her body in her apartment Dec. 7, 2021, wrapped in her Hannah Montana blanket with her T-shirt tied around her neck and a plastic bag over her head. She had been strangled and brutally sexually assaulted. Furniture was toppled to make the crime look like some sort of robbery.
Prosecutors said security camera video revealed the premeditation of the crime.
A day before the murder, it showed Jones happily dancing as she awaited a food delivery. Cunningham lurked behind a truck, eventually speaking to her.
He followed her inside her apartment just down the hall from his.
DNA and fingerprint evidence gathered through painstaking police work was key. They found Cunningham’s fingerprints on an aerosol spray can in MJ’s bedrooms. Her blood was on the bottom of the sandals security camera video showed he was wearing the day of the murder.
In multiple interviews with police, Cunningham never confessed to murder but kept changing his story, including on the day of the arrest when he started by saying he only kissed MJ, later admit more when police confronted him about the DNA.
When the judge asked Cunningham if he had anything to say, he declined, offering no apology, no remorse.
Prosecutors asked for and received the stiffest sentence possible in this extremely disturbing case.
MJ's teachers said the crime has hit them hard, deeply impacting their work to help their students gain skills and independence.
"Because a lot of our students have difficulty understanding what a predator looks like, because it can look like your neighbor, and so that’s been really challenging for us as a group," Bindocci said.
But they will continue to fondly remember MJ.
"When you see a butterfly fly by or a bird in the sky, just to take a moment and take it in, because that’s what Melia was," Bindocci said. "She was a free spirit and a happy spirit."
Cunningham’s defense plans to file an appeal.
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