Latoya Clark, the aunt of victim Audreona Barnes, delivers an impact statement during the sentencing of murderer Bennie Washington on June 12, 2023. (Screenshot: WKYC; mugshot: Cuyahoga County Jail)
Family members of a teenage murder victim whose remains were left to decompose on her killer’s balcony for months offered heart-wrenching impact statements at the man’s sentencing hearing.
“You’re disgusting,” grieving mother Akua Avegnon told Bennie J. Washington as he awaited his punishment on Monday. Washington, 40, was convicted in May of murdering his then-girlfriend Audreona Barnes, 18, who had been missing since July 2021. Officials say that he shot her in the head and then left her body to rot for months on his apartment balcony in Cleveland, Ohio.
Authorities didn’t discover Barnes’ remains until March 2022, after Washington had been evicted. A cleaning crew made the grim discovery; the girl had apparently been stashed under a pile of clothes and blankets.
A jury convicted Barnes of two counts of murder, two counts of felonious assault, and a count each of offenses against human corpse and having weapons while under disability. He was sentenced Monday to 38 years to life in prison.
Avegnon took Washington to task for feigning support after Barnes had gone missing — despite being the person responsible for her death.
“I hope every time you close your eyes, you see her. Every time it’s quiet, you hear crying,” Avegnon said in a heart-wrenching and lacerating statement recorded by WKYC. “You deserve everything that you’re gonna get. You are disgusting. You helped me look for her. You called every day. ‘Just checking on you. Making sure you’re OK. We’re going to find her.’ When all the while you knew what you did to her. You knew! But you just kept calling me. You kept saying, ‘Oh, she’s coming home’ when you knew she wasn’t. You’re disgusting.”
Barnes’ aunt, Latoya Clark, told Washington that she couldn’t fathom why he killed the teenager.
“I don’t even know what to say, but knowing that a coward actually killed my niece — it’s just still shocking for me, her siblings, and the kids,” Clark said at the sentencing. “I don’t understand. I don’t get it. You’re way older. She’s a baby. You killed a baby. There is nothing on this earth that an 18-year-old can do to a 40-year-old for you to kill her. You’re a coward, and I hope you get everything you deserve.”
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Barnes had met with recruiters for the U.S. Army, Warrensville Heights police Detective Gregory Curry told local news station WOIO at the time of the search. Recruiters picked her up from Washington’s Cleveland apartment and dropped her off at the same location, he said.
“They just don’t know if she went back into the apartment or if she walked away,” the detective added.
Avegnon said Monday that Barnes had dreamed of joining the military since 9th grade, and that she had graduated high school early, at age 17.
Avegnon also said her daughter had been pregnant.
“You stood in the kitchen and said, ‘I miss her and my baby,”” Avegnon told Washington. “But yet you took her knowing that she was pregnant. Without a care because you’re a disgusting individual.”
As part of her statement, she also called Washington a pedophile.
In 2021, Curry said there was no evidence of foul play in Barnes’ disappearance, but he was not ruling it out. He described Washington as being verbally hostile with the detective and his partner during questioning, saying that the man “blew up” and had asked for an attorney.
“‘I hate the police,’” Curry had said, reportedly quoting Washington. “Called us all kind of names.”
According to the detective, this exchange took place outside Washington’s apartment. Police never made it inside.
In the days leading up to Washington’s arrest the following year, people reportedly had called the cops on him for “erratic behavior in public.” Washington had previously been sentenced to seven years in prison in a 2010 case for shooting a woman in the back and injuring her over a $40 cocaine debt.
Police said when they first tried arresting Washington, he fled, entering another person’s home and jumping out a window. Police finally arrested him the following day.
Barnes’ co-defendant, Marquetta Wallace, 36, pleaded guilty on April 4 to offenses against a human corpse. She is scheduled for sentencing on June 26.
Watch Washington’s sentencing hearing, via WKYC, below.
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