Nina Bernice Battle, a 32-year-old Black / African American woman from Ypsilanti Township, Michigan, spent the night before her death celebrating at a concert in Grand Rapids, sharing the kind of carefree energy that makes a weekend feel wide open. By the next afternoon, that normal rhythm was shattered inside her apartment at the Fairway Trails complex. A sharp report of gunfire rang out, and a neighbor called for help just after 4 p.m.
Deputies moved through the building trying to pinpoint where the sound had come from, and when they reached the right door, they found Nina dead inside.
Investigators quickly realized how strange the scene was. The apartment door was unlocked, and there was no obvious sign of forced entry, the kind of detail that suggests the person who came inside wasn’t smashing their way in. Inside, she lay on the kitchen floor, and the medical examiner later concluded she had been shot twice—first in the chest near the couch with the gun pressed against her skin, then again in the back as she stumbled toward the kitchen. The home itself was described as neat and orderly, but there were unsettling signs of a hurried search: purses emptied, a sock missing from one foot, and the matching sock and shoe left behind near the couch. People who knew her told investigators she was known to keep cash close—especially tucked into a sock—yet little cash was found, and detectives noted other things that should have been present, like active cell phones and drugs, were gone.
As detectives tried to rebuild her final hours, their attention tightened around someone who appeared woven into her everyday life. Phone records showed Darrick Lavale Duffin had been in frequent contact with her in the days leading up to the shooting, and location data placed his phone in the area of her apartment for more than twelve hours before the neighbor discovered a bullet had come through the shared wall. Investigators also found his fingerprints on items inside the apartment. Then came witness accounts that read like a grim echo of the scene: one person said Duffin texted that he had “hit a lick” and was picked up at a nearby car wash not long afterward—slang, witnesses testified, he typically used after stealing something. Another witness reported him saying he “popped her.” In the day that followed, multiple witnesses described him suddenly handing out money and appearing to have far more cash than usual, while claiming he’d won it at a casino—despite testimony that those with him didn’t know of any big winnings.
In 2018, Duffin was arraigned in Washtenaw County in connection with the March 4, 2017 shooting, facing charges that included felony murder, open murder, felony firearm, and possession of a firearm by a felon. Court records for the case reflect it was filed in June 2018 in the Washtenaw County circuit court.
The case ultimately moved through a bench trial that ended with convictions for felony murder, felony-firearm, and being a felon in possession of a firearm, along with a second-degree murder conviction that was later addressed on appeal. The trial court sentenced Duffin to life in prison for felony murder, along with a two-year term for felony-firearm and 40 months to five years for felon-in-possession. In January 2021, the Michigan Court of Appeals vacated the second-degree murder conviction while otherwise affirming the outcome, sending the case back only to correct the judgment of sentence. For Nina’s family and the people who loved her, the legal language could never translate the human loss—a life that, according to her death notice, began March 8, 1984, and ended March 4, 2017, leaving a community to reckon with how quickly celebration can turn into silence.
