PhD Student Accused Of Stalking Her Ex-Boyfriend, Gunning Him Down In His Apartment

A Chicago PhD student has been accused of stalking and fatally shooting her ex-boyfriend five times in his Washington, D.C. apartment Saturday.

Nijinsky Latassia Dix, 37, is now facing charges of second-degree murder, possession of an unregistered firearm and possession of unregistered ammunition, in the death of 44-year-old Terry Hickman, according to a public incident report obtained by Oxygen.com.

Metropolitan Police officers were called to the apartment complex where Hickman lived just before 5:30 p.m. Saturday after receiving calls about a woman with a gun and shots being fired in the area, according to an affidavit in the case obtained by Oxygen.com.

Officers identified the shots had come from Hickman’s apartment and arrived to hear a woman inside screaming for help. The woman—later identified as Dix—refused to open the locked door but officers were able to gain entry to the apartment using a master key from the apartment complex.

After entering the apartment, officers saw Hickman “lying face down on the floor” with Hix “kneeling” at his feet with a handgun in her left hand, according to the court documents.

Officers also heard a voice coming from a nearby cell phone, which had been put on speaker phone. The person on the other end of the phone identified herself as Dix’s mother and allegedly told officers that her daughter had called her and told her, “He pushed me, and I shot him,” the affidavit stated.

Along with the cell phone, officers also recovered Dix’s Florida driver’s license and an employee ID card from the University of Notre Dame, where she had been working.

Emergency responders tried to revive Hickman, but he was pronounced dead at the scene. An autopsy would later reveal that he had been shot five times: once in the back of the head, once to the left cheek, twice in the neck and once in the left arm, according to the court documents.

Dix was transported to a local hospital where she was evaluated for possible injuries. Medical staff reported Dix—who police described as “upset and despondent”—had a left abrasion to the inside of her lower left lip. It was not clear how she received the injury.

Dix also complained of back pain, but the doctor who examined her said she did not say what had caused the pain.

Dix allegedly told the doctor that she had “blacked out” for a period of time, but the doctor was unsure what would have caused a loss of memory and said she found no signs of physical trauma or assault when examining Dix.

After Dix was released from the hospital and brought to the police station, authorities said she continued to have apparent lapses in memory and repeatedly asked detectives for some sort of information to jog her memory, according to the affidavit.

When detectives provided her with a photo of Hickman and asked her if she knew the 44-year-old, she allegedly began crying and repeatedly saying “get it away from me,” authorities said.

After police removed the photo from the interrogation room, Dix allegedly told detectives “Please make sure he is gone, make sure he is not near me, make sure Terry [is] not near me.”

She also allegedly told detectives, “You don’t do people you love like that, that’s not love, I don’t want that, he can’t do people like that, you don’t do people you love like that, I’m sorry,” the affidavit states.

Hickman’s family told investigators that the couple had dated for about three months before breaking up in May. The family member described the relationship as “casual” but said after they broke up, Dix had allegedly begun stalking Hickman, according to the affidavit.

The person—identified in the affidavit as Hickman’s next of kin—said that although Dix had lived in another state, she had somehow found out where Hickman lived.

A witness who knew Hickman well and lived in the same apartment complex told officers that they had seen Hickman in the parking garage with a woman the witness later identified via photograph as Dix, about 30 to 45 minutes before police received the calls about shots being fired in the area.

Other witnesses reported hearing the gunshots and a woman screaming “Oh my God!” and yelling for help.

One witness in a nearby apartment, reporting hearing a woman’s voice after the gunshots saying something like “Please wake up” and “Someone help me.”

Dix had reportedly been a PhD student at the University of Illinois Chicago at the time of the fatal shooting, Chicago station WMAQ-TV reports.

In a statement to Oxygen.com, Paul J. Browne, vice president for public affairs and communications at Notre Dame confirmed that Dix is an employee of the university.

“The university is aware of her arrest and will cooperate with law enforcement as appropriate,” Browne said.

Dix is the director of the “Talent Search Upward Bound” program known as TRiO, according to a university website.