The Murder of Yasheeka “Mouda” Grant (Connecticut)

What started with a call to police for a domestic disturbance ended with a four-day manhunt in search of a suspected killer. When that suspect, the victim’s husband, was finally apprehended, it seemed on the surface like an open-and-shut case. All signs pointed to a domestic violence homicide triggered by the dissolution of an already tumultuous and violent marriage.

But then the case went to trial and the accused killer told his side of the story for the first time… And the prosecution took major issue with all of it.

The 9-1-1 Call

It was around 10 p.m. on April 7, 2017 when a dispatcher answered a 9-1-1 call originating from New Britain, Connecticut. According to reporting by Sandra Gomez-Aceves for The Hartford Courant, the anonymous caller was hearing concerning noises coming from an apartment upstairs. The caller said there was a lot of ruckus – fighting, yelling, and sounds they described as bodies being tossed around.

Police responded to the apartment complex at 48 North Mountain Road in New Britain by 10:05 p.m. Multiple knocks on the door of a second floor unit went unanswered and the door was locked so officers made the judgement call to enter the apartment by force. Once inside, things escalated quickly.

On the floor in one of the bedrooms was the body of a woman lying face down in a pool of blood. There were signs of a struggle all around her with a blood-like substance on the bed and she was only wearing one shoe.

The victim was identified as 33-year old Yasheeka Miles and she was pronounced dead at the scene.

Glancing around the residence, police could see signs of a family living there. Toys and diapers were all over the place and photos of two smiling kids, one who looked to be a toddler and another school-aged child, adorned the walls. Police quickly searched the apartment for any children but found none at the scene.

Piecing together what appeared to be a deadly domestic disturbance, police attempted to locate the children, as well as Yasheeka’s spouse, 36-year old Patrick Miles. Yasheeka’s older child was safe and accounted for somewhere else, but the 2-year old daughter she and Patrick shared was nowhere to be found, and neither was Patrick.

Police called for an Amber Alert to be issued for Yasheeka’s daughter. It warned that the child was with someone that police “considered dangerous” and that this person should be approached with “extreme caution”.

Thankfully, the Amber Alert worked. The quick communication of the missing child reached a member of her family who called police around 4 a.m. on the morning of April 8th. It was Patrick’s sister and she told police that he showed up at her place in New York, totally unannounced, and handed off the toddler, asking her to take care of the child before taking off. According to Don Stacom’s reporting for the Hartford Courant, Patrick’s sister didn’t mention anything about Yasheeka or the murder at the time.

Yasheeka’s daughter was safe and so the Amber Alert was cancelled, but Patrick was still MIA as the homicide investigation back at the apartment began to unfold. With a search warrant in hand, New Britain police along with the Connecticut State Police Major Crimes Unit processed the crime scene. According to court records, police located bullet fragments and at least two nine millimeter shell casings in the bedroom, which aligned with autopsy findings. Yasheeka had been shot three times: once in the temple, once in her face, and once in the shoulder.

A warrant was issued for the arrest of Patrick Miles and he was described as a “potential suspect” in the fatal shooting of his wife.

Background on Patrick and Yasheeka’s Relationship

A quick note: Although most, if not all previous media coverage uses the name Yasheeka Miles when talking about this case, Yasheeka’s family chose to remember her by a nickname and her family surname, Yasheeka “Mouda” Grant. That’s the name they used for her obituary, so that’s what we chose to title this episode and what I’ll be using going forward.

Court records and incident reports show that Yasheeka’s relationship with Patrick had been tumultuous, and even violent, for years. Don Stacom and Christine Dempsey report for the Hartford Courant that during the winter of 2014, before they were married, Yasheeka and Patrick were living together and had a 6-week old baby. On Christmas Eve of that year, Patrick allegedly hit Yasheeka in the face while the baby rested in her arms.

Yasheeka called police to report the incident but when officers arrived Patrick was gone and Yasheeka wasn’t willing to tell officers what happened. According to a report by Officer Ethan Roberge, police intended to seek an arrest warrant for the alleged domestic violence assault but a prosecutor said one couldn’t be issued unless Yasheeka gave a written statement of the incident. Yasheeka told the officer that she felt like she overreacted by calling the police. The officer told Yasheeka about domestic violence laws in Connecticut, and reminded her how serious DV is, and she said she understood. No charges were filed.

Fast forward several months later, on July 20, 2015, Yasheeka found a Vernon, Connecticut police officer on the street and told him that her boyfriend had just beaten her while she was holding their baby. Police located Patrick and tried to stop him, but a report indicates that he sped off in a car going somewhere near 110 miles per hour down Interstate 84. Police gave chase but Patrick got away.

Five days after that alleged assault and Patrick’s escape, he and Yasheeka got married in Indiana. Patrick was still wanted for the assault.

About a week after they said “I do”, Patrick turned himself in to the Hartford Correctional Center to serve a sentence for an unrelated crime. However, once he was in custody, Vernon police charged him with crimes associated with that July 20th assault and police chase.

A Superior Court judge issued a protective order as a result of those charges and Patrick was not to have any contact with Yasheeka or their young daughter. However, he was apparently unable to abide by the order. Patrick called Yasheeka 53 times from jail and approved her as a visitor, in violation of the protective order. Now, Yasheeka visited Patrick nine times during his three week incarceration, and six of the visits were after the protection order was in place. Records show that Patrick and Yasheeka talked on the phone for about 12 hours total after the protection order was in place and Patrick had asked to talk to their daughter, too.

Patrick was charged with 17 counts of violating a protective order. All but two of those charges were dropped by the time Patrick went to court on March 23, 2017. He was ultimately convicted of breach of peace and a single count of violating the order. He was sentenced to four years in prison suspended after two years of probation. That was just two and a half weeks before Yasheeka’s murder.

They were still legally married at the time of her death, but conversations found by investigators on Yasheeka’s cell phone showed that she was planning to end things with Patrick once and for all and they’d talked about it as recently as the day she was killed. A search warrant affidavit obtained by NBC Connecticut indicates that though the apartment where Yasheeka’s body was found was once the home she shared with Patrick, she had already moved out not too long before she was killed. As the investigation revealed, Yasheeka had only stopped into the apartment that evening to pick up some of her stuff that she’d left behind.

Witnesses told investigators that on top of the documented domestic violence by Patrick against Yasheeka, there were accusations and evidence of infidelity. Yasheeka was ready to be done with all of it, and determined to move onward and upwards with her kids and without Patrick. She was pursuing a higher education at Capital Community College. One comment from a classmate on Yasheeka’s memorial page reads, “God knows you would have been a kick ass nurse.”

In a story by Catalina Trivino for NBC Connecticut, Yasheeka’s mother, Adriene, spoke candidly about Yasheeka’s own past run-ins with the law but said that she was finding a new path forward…And Adriene believes Patrick couldn’t or wouldn’t follow her down that path of self-improvement. Adriene and others close to Yasheeka also believed that Patrick was jealous of many things in Yasheeka’s life.

When their relationship decayed and while Patrick was seeing other people, Yasheeka started seeing someone else, too, a woman she previously dated named Kye. According to Kye, she, too, had become a victim of Patrick’s threats and attempted violence in the months prior to Yasheeka’s murder.

Kye later testified that she and Yasheeka dated from about June 2011 until July 2012, but even after they broke off their romantic relationship, their friendship remained. It wasn’t until late 2016 that the spark rekindled between them.

Patrick was angry that Yasheeka was seeing Kye. Sometime in late 2016 or early 2017, Kye was standing outside a funeral in Hartford when she says Patrick pulled up in, “a Pepsi blue BMW two door, driving really fast…[He] almost hit the curb and he jumped out of the car [saying] let me talk to you, let me talk to you.”

Kye said she refused to talk to Patrick and he drove off but then came back some time later while she and her siblings were still standing outside talking. Kye didn’t see Patrick walking up to her, but when he was just inches away, he allegedly pulled out a gun from his jacket and said to her twice something like, “I told you I wasn’t no punk.” Some court records state that Kye did not report the incident to police, however, other sources say she did tell police but Yasheeka asked her not to use Patrick’s name.

Kye said there was another incident, too, this one on March 26, 2017. Kye claimed that Patrick barged into her apartment unannounced and found her with Yasheeka in bed. He yelled derogatory terms at the women as he approached them. Yasheeka was able to call 9-1-1 and Patrick left. This all happened just days before Yasheeka’s murder.

Yasheeka Grant’s story continues on Dark Downeast. Press play to hear the full episode wherever you get your podcast.