GUILTY DC - Corrina Mehiel, 33, stabbed to death, Washington DC, 21 March 2017

Police have made an arrest in the murder of Corrina Mehiel, the North Carolina artist who was found bound and stabbed to death inside a rowhouse in Northeast Washington last week.

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By Monday morning, March 20, Mehiel was busy lugging her belongings from a rented basement apartment on the 600 block of 14th Street on Capitol Hill and packing them into her Toyota Prius, parked on the quiet residential block's curb.

Mehiel was preparing to return to her family's home in Burnsville, N.C. The next phase of her artist's journey remained to be determined. But by all accounts, Mehiel's creative spirit had been stoked by her experiences in D.C.

Less than a block away, a man, later identified by police as 29-year-old El Hadji Alpha Madiou Toure, exited a municipal bus around 10 a.m. Monday, March 20.

Residential security cameras showed the tall, hooded figure walking down 14th Street, lingering among the well-kept row homes along the 600 block.

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The security camera footage didn't show what happened next, but authorities said Toure crept up on Mehiel, pushing her inside her basement apartment in broad daylight.

In the nearly four hours that followed, that home became a brutal torture chamber, according to court documents.

Toure took a "sharp object," those documents said, and proceeded to "torture" Mehiel, stabbing her repeatedly in the neck area while she was tied up. There were defensive stab wounds on one of her palms, as well.

It's believed Toure tortured Mehiel to gain the pass code for her ATM card. By the early afternoon, he apparently had what he wanted.

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A judge ruled that El Hadji Alpha Madiou Toure, 28, is mentally competent to go on trial for first degree murder in the fatal stabbing of Corrina Mehiel, 34, who was found dead in her apartment March 21.

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Toure faces charges of first-degree murder, sexual abuse, kidnapping, burglary, robbery, theft, credit card fraud and identity theft.

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