12 Years After Brooklyn Teen's Haunting Murder, a DNA Breakthrough

DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN, BROOKLYN — More than a decade after 17-year-old Sharabia Thomas' dead, naked, brutalized body was found stuffed inside two laundry bags in a Bushwick alleyway, prosecutors have finally lodged murder charges against the man they believe took her life.

Detectives with the NYPD's Cold Case Squad worked with the Brooklyn District Attorney's forensic science unit over this past summer to run a DNA test — much improved since the DNA tests of the early 2000s — on fingernail clippings collected during Thomas' autopsy in 2004, according to the DA.

The results came back a month later with a match: Kwauhuru Govan, 38, a former Bushwick resident serving time in Florida for armed robbery.

"Sharabia bravely fought for her life when she was attacked and the evidence that helped to find her alleged killer was discovered under her fingernails," Acting Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a statement Thursday. "It is my hope that solving this terrible crime will offer a small measure of comfort to Sharabia's family, who suffered such an unspeakable loss."

Govan, who lived in Bushwick at the time of Thomas' murder — just two blocks from the victim's home — was released from the Florida prison and extradited to Brooklyn overnight, the DA said. He was charged Thursday with second-degree murder and first-degree kidnapping, and is currently being held without bail.

Despite the DNA evidence against him, Govan has claimed he didn't know the victim. In a Brooklyn courtroom Thursday, he argued he was innocent, according to Pix11.

If convicted, Govan faces up to 25 years in jail.

Thomas' naked, lifeless body was found discarded in an alleyway adjacent to 130 Palmetto St. on the afternoon of Feb. 11, 2004. The young teen had suffered blunt force trauma to her head, face and torso, the DA said, and "had visible ligature marks on her wrists and ankles." Her cause of death: suffocation.

Thomas was reportedly on her way to school for a field trip when she was killed.

A DNA swab taken from the teen's body during the original murder investigation had found no match for her killer, and the case went cold.

But in May 2016, local news channel Pix11 brought the case back to the attention of the NYPD, with tips from a woman who told them she was a former neighbor of the Thomas family.

Asked why it took more than a decade to run a second DNA test on Thomas, the NYPD declined to comment. A police spokesperson would say only that the investigation was ongoing.

Two months after Thomas' murder, her classmate, Hilda Duran, took a photo of the alleyway where her dead body was found as part of a school art project. Duran, who was 14 at the time, had gone to school with Thomas at EBC Bushwick High School for Public Service.

"This photo represents the problem that Bushwick is not a safe place at all for anyone," Thomas' former schoolmate said.

Photo of Sharabia Thomas courtesy of the Brooklyn DA's Office