“I want you out of my life,” a TikToker’s wife wrote to him hours before he killed her – NBC 7 San Diego

Closing arguments are scheduled for Friday in the trial of a man accused of murdering his wife and another man by shooting them to death in the couple’s East Village apartment.

Ali Abulaban, 32, who was known in online circles as a content creator nicknamed “JinnKid,” faces life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted of the murders of 28-year-old Ana Abulaban and 29-year-old Rayburn Cardenas Barron on October 21, 2021.

Prosecutors allege that Abulaban killed both victims because he was angry that his wife no longer wanted to be married to him.

Assistant District Attorney Taren Brast told jurors that after numerous incidents of domestic violence and Abulaban’s sexual encounters with another woman, Ana made it clear that she was done with Abulaban.

While Abulaban testified that his wife may have made empty divorce threats out of anger and was unsure whether reconciliation between the two was possible, Brast argued that Ana’s position was obvious.

“I want you out of my life once and for all,” she wrote to Abulaban a few hours before her murder.

Abulaban testified that he did not have sex with the other woman, but that Ana told others that he had cheated on her.

On the day of the shooting, Abulaban said he tried to catch Ana red-handed with another man to prove that “she was doing the same things she accused me of doing.”

After hearing Ana and Barron in the apartment through an app he activated on his daughter’s iPad, Abulaban rushed over to confront them, he said.

When he opened the door to the apartment, Abulaban testified that he was shocked to see his wife with Barron. He “freaked out” and began shooting himself, without any control over his senses.

“I couldn’t bear this (expletive) betrayal,” Abulaban said through tears on Wednesday. The next thing he remembered was “shooting and not being able to stop.”

In his defense, which spanned nearly three full days of testimony, Abulaban detailed his mental health issues, childhood trauma from alleged abuse and his growing cocaine addiction, all of which the defense said played a role in his state of mind before and during the shooting.

Abulaban testified that after moving to San Diego in early 2021, he and his wife developed a rift, partly due to the drug-fueled party lifestyle they shared with Ana’s friends, including Barron.

He testified that the presence of her friends “affected my marriage and changed Ana.”

Abulaban said his undiagnosed mental health problems and drug addiction, which escalated to daily use, only made his handling of marital problems worse.

Brast had previously told the jury during the trial that Abulaban was “jealous, controlling and violent” and had physically and emotionally abused his wife throughout their marriage.

Abulaban acknowledged that he had previously hit and pushed his wife in the months before the shooting. He also admitted that he had pressured her not to contact police or seek a restraining order in connection with those incidents.

After the shooting, Abulaban called his mother, father and a friend to confess and sent them a photograph he had taken of the victims’ bodies.

He later called 911 and informed the dispatcher that he had found the victims dead.

Abulaban then picked up his five-year-old daughter from school and told her shortly before his arrest: “I hurt Mommy,” he testified.