Murder trial stemming from Newport News Post Office feud begins

A murder trial began Tuesday in a slaying that prosecutors say arose from a long-term feud between two U.S. Postal Service employees in Newport News.

Jeremy Todd Pettway, 41, who worked at the Denbigh post office, is charged with first-degree murder and other charges in the slaying of 39-year-old Salahud-Din “Sal” Ibn Shabazz on April 7 just inside the doorway of his family’s home.

Newport News prosecutors say the killing stemmed from a dispute that Shabazz’s wife — who also worked at the Post Office — was having with a mail carrier named Tashara Jackson.

In an incident in March, the two exchanged words outside a Newport News nail salon, and Jacqueline Shabazz used a knife to slash Jackson’s tires while Jackson was getting her nails done.

That was followed by Jacqueline’s car being vandalized in retribution — tires slashed, the car was spray painted and an object stuffed in the gas tank — when the Shabazz family was out of town in Las Vegas.

Then, in the evening of April 6, Sal Shabazz went with his wife confront Jackson before a party at the Harpoon Larry’s restaurant on J. Clyde Morris Boulevard.

Witnesses said he used a Taser to keep others at bay while his wife and Jackson fought in the parking lot.

Prosecutors say that a few hours later, about 1 a.m., Jackson enlisted Jerome Pettway to go with her to the Shabazz family’s home on Menchville Court.

When Sal Shabazz answered the door, they contend, Pettway almost immediately opened fire, leaving Sal Shabazz dead just inside his front door.

The evidence in the case, prosecutors say, includes the tracking of the Pettway’s and Jackson’s cell phones from the southern part of the city to the Shabazz home in Menchville.

Prosecutors contend that surveillance video — from both traffic cameras and Ring security footage — shows Jackson’s SUV picking up Pettway, then driving down Jefferson Avenue to the Shabazz’s house.

Jacqueline Shabazz testified that she and their children had gone to stay at a York County motel that night, in part because she thought Jackson might try to get back at them because of the restaurant altercation.

Sal Shabazz stayed at the house, she said.

Jacqueline testified that she was talking with her husband on the phone at about 1 a.m. when he suddenly got a knock on the door. Then, she testified, she heard a brief exchange of words, fired by two gunshots in the background.

She called 911.

But Pettway’s lawyer, James Ellenson, contends that his client is the wrong man — and that Shabazz’s wife was the real killer.

He said the evidence shows that Jaqueline Shabazz had gunshot residue on her hand the night her husband was killed.

The attorney contends that she killed her husband to collect $156,000 in insurance money and to be with another postal service worker, with whom she was having a long-term extramarital relationship.

In fact, Ellenson asserted that the feud between Shabazz and Jackson stemmed from that relationship, given that Jackson was good friends with the co-worker’s wife.

The trial has featured hundreds of text messages — some of them sexually explicit — between Jacqueline Shabazz and the co-worker.

On the witness stand Tuesday, Jacqueline Shabazz

initially downplayed her relationship with the co-worker before admitting she was having sex with him regularly.

When prosecutors attempted to keep the text messages out of the trial, Newport News Circuit Court Gary Mills ruled that Ellenson was within his rights to bring them in because they go to the heart of the “defense theory” of the case.

Mills also said the prosecution “opened the door” to the messages when Jacqueline Shabazz “minimized” her relationship with the co-worker.

Ellenson separately introduced evidence that Sal Shabazz punched Jacqueline Shabazz in the face in March 2020 when he believed she lied about where she had been that day, as well as a September 2017 incident in which he headbutted her after “finding a message” from someone else.

On the witness stand Tuesday, Jacqueline Shabazz at first denied that she told police officers on April 7 about any problems in the marriage or that they had talked of a divorce. But she backtracked after Ellenson played body camera footage of her telling officers just that.

Among the key players in the case, only Sal Shabazz was not a U.S. Post Office employee.

A murder case against Tashara Jackson is also pending in Newport News, with her trial scheduled for March.

The trial continues today.

Peter Dujardin, 757-247-4749, pdujardin@dailypress.com