'He did it, and I knew he did it.' Jury finds man guilty of killing Swissvale mom, daughter

When detectives found Megan Campbell’s body on the floor of her Swissvale apartment, she was dressed in her blue nursing scrubs. Her toothbrush was under her body.

She was killed, they said, as she brushed her teeth to get ready for work.

They found her 7-year-old daughter, Lyla, clad in a dress, on her bed, in her room, covered by an owl blanket and facing the wall.

Both had been shot in the head at close range.

“Lyla was hiding,” the prosecutor said. “She heard her mother being shot. She was killed because she was a witness who happened to be around.”

Allegheny County Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Berosh on Tuesday told a jury during her closing argument that the Campbells were killed that day — Feb. 15, 2023 — because Megan was kicking out Kareef Easington, the man who had been boarding with her on and off for several months.

On Tuesday afternoon, that jury found Easington, 36, of Swissvale guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and tampering with evidence. He showed no reaction to the verdict, which calls for a mandatory penalty of life in prison with no chance for parole.

Easington will be sentenced by Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Kevin G. Sasinoski on July 11.

The panel of seven men and five women deliberated for about four hours. A few of them shed tears as the verdict was read and when Easington was being handcuffed and led away by sheriff’s deputies.

Megan’s mother, Joan Campbell, said after the verdict she was grateful.

“He did it, and I knew he did it,” she said. “I am grateful that the jury realized that he did it.”

Investigators believe that Easington killed Megan and Lyla around 7 a.m. in their Sailor Place apartment.

Joan Campbell spoke with her daughter on the phone that morning at 6:22 a.m. Her daughter, who was usually upbeat and positive, was somber.

The last words she heard her 39-year-old daughter say — words directed at Easington, Berosh said — were: “‘Get the [expletive] hell out of my house.’”

“Megan was kicking him out. She was getting rid of him,” Berosh said. “That’s what the motive was for killing them.”

The prosecutor recounted for the jury the evidence against Easington. Police said he called 911 that morning three times between 9:06 a.m. and 9:34 a.m. The person never identified himself, but asked to talk to someone, or to have paramedics respond. He never gave the correct apartment number and instead directed them to others in the building.

Then, Berosh said, Easington barricaded the apartment’s front door — placing a 50-pound and 30-pound weight on a chair against it — before leaping off the balcony to the mulch below.

Video surveillance from nearby Delaware Avenue showed him running — at first with a limp — at 10:12 a.m.

He was wearing a gray, hooded sweatshirt and blue jeans and carried a backpack, the prosecutor said.

When he arrived at a friend’s house 38 minutes later, he was wearing the same clothes. Easington remained there for two days — shaving his beard during that time, Berosh said.

When questioned at police headquarters on Feb. 18, Easington was still wearing the same clothes.

The sweatshirt, Berosh said, tested positive for gunshot residue.

“The defendant ran, but he couldn’t hide,” Berosh said. “He couldn’t hide from the physical evidence. He couldn’t hide from the surveillance. He couldn’t hide from the fact he lived with the victims.”

But defense attorney Keith Emerick told the jury in his closing that some mail and other documents found in the Campbell apartment belonged to two other men who the police failed to thoroughly investigate.

“Were leads ignored? Not properly followed?” he asked.

Emerick called it a “textbook case of confirmation bias.”

The police investigation wasn’t a search for the truth, he said, but settling on a conclusion. Because Easington lived there, detectives focused solely on him.

Emerick also discounted the voice identification of his client made by Megan Campbell’s mother and brother.

The day after the slayings, detectives met with Joan Campbell and her son, Shawn, and asked if they could identify the 911 caller from a recording of the calls.

When they listened, they both answered, “That’s him. That’s Kareef.”

But Emerick played for the jury body camera footage in which the detective playing the calls used Easington’s first name just moments before asking if they recognized the voice.

The defense attorney argued to the jury that the identification was improperly influenced.

“Suggestion is the planting of a seed,” Emerick said. “That’s all it takes. What you heard … was the poisonous fruit of that rotten seed.”

If the identification were not tainted, he said, Joan and Shawn Campbell would not have said, “‘That’s him,’” Emerick said. They would have used Easington’s name.

But the prosecutor discounted that argument when she addressed the jury in her closing.

“There is no suggestiveness. There is no taint,” Berosh said. “Joan Campbell brought up the defendant’s name on her own.”

But Emerick told jurors that fact should give them reasonable doubt about Easington’s guilt.

“Reasonable doubt is doubt that gives you pause — pause prior to acting.”

“The pause is the thing,” he said. “Does it give you pause? That’s reasonable doubt.”

Megan’s friend since childhood, Tyleda Worou, and one of her private nursing patients, Shari Kubitz, watched closing arguments Tuesday morning and were in the courtroom when the verdict was delivered just after 4 p.m.

“Although this doesn’t bring them back, it can definitely help being my healing journey,” Worou said.

Kubitz, who had been Megan’s patient for about a year, believes she may have been the last person to see her the night before she was killed.

“She was wonderful,” Kubitz said. “She was really special as a person.”

The women described Megan, who had just been promoted to director of nursing at the rehabilitation facility where she worked, as caring, compassionate and flexible.

Joan Campbell said Megan was not one to hold grudges. She was forgiving.

“That’s who she was. She would help you as much as she could. She was a people person always,” Joan Campbell said. “And Lyla was the same.”

Her only grandchild, Joan continued, was an artist and drew beautiful gowns.

“She was just everything,” she said. “To see her life taken away like that wasn’t easy.

“I was grateful for Megan — for having her for 39 years — and for Lyla, for seven years.”