Detroit Man Allegedly Killed to Silence Him as Trial Witness
Three Detroit residents are charged with first-degree murder after prosecutors say Robert Harbin was shot to prevent him from testifying at Gerald Towns' trial.
A prosecution lives or dies on its witnesses. When those witnesses are eliminated before they can take the stand, cases collapse, guilty verdicts evaporate, and the machinery of justice grinds to a halt. It is, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said after announcing charges April 3, among the gravest offenses a person can commit: "Almost nothing is more serious than the murder of a witness. Nothing raises the hackles of a prosecutor more."
The witness Worthy was talking about was Robert Harbin, 42. Prosecutors say Harbin had been slated to testify at Gerald Keith Towns' upcoming trial when he was shot and killed on October 14, 2025. According to prosecutors, Bekelba Migel Holland, 52, followed Harbin to his home on Kelly Road in Detroit and fired several rounds into Harbin's vehicle, killing him at the scene.
Towns, 62, was the very defendant whose trial Harbin would have attended. He was already facing separate pending charges and awaiting trial on other violent charges in Wayne County when, prosecutors allege, he became part of a conspiracy to permanently silence Harbin. Tycie Denise Parham, 48, is charged alongside Holland and Towns for allegedly aiding and abetting the shooting.
The charges Worthy announced, six months after Harbin's death, include first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, witness intimidation, and multiple firearm counts. The breadth of those counts signals that investigators built a coordination case, not just a shooting case. Conspiracy charges require prosecutors to establish agreement, communication, and joint purpose; in cases like this, that foundation typically rests on phone records, surveillance footage, and financial links between defendants.
Parham was arraigned and remanded to jail following the April 3 announcement. Towns, who had already been awaiting trial on separate violent charges, now faces a legal calendar that includes both his original pending counts and the new murder conspiracy charges, with pretrial proceedings setting discovery timelines and bail for each case.
The six months between the killing on Kelly Road and the charges reflect the complexity of building a case rooted in alleged obstruction. Prosecutors needed to establish not just who fired into Harbin's vehicle, but who directed it, who assisted, and how all three defendants allegedly coordinated to reach that outcome. Those questions will define what unfolds in Wayne County courts as the cases against Holland, Parham, and Towns move forward.
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