HOWARD COUNTY, Md. — Nearly five years after a pregnant woman was shot in a Howard County home, police have made an arrest in the cold case.
In 2020, Rabiah Ahmad was 28 weeks pregnant when bullets tore through the wall of a home on Dovecoat Drive in Columbia. Ahmad died at Shock Trauma in Baltimore, and days later, so did her baby girl, Ahja, who was delivered by emergency C-section.
"Rabiah was a beacon of light. She was even growing life within her womb," Jameelah Ahmad, Rabiah's mother, said in 2020, during an emotional news conference at Howard County Police Headquarters.
The case went cold, until Howard County's Cold Case Unit received it in September 2023. Investigator Wade Zufall took weeks to review the evidence before making a breakthrough.
"This was a tragic case of somebody who was not targeted, was just sitting in her home, when somebody sprayed a bunch of bullets into the house and killed her," said Seth Hoffman, spokesperson for the Howard County Police Department, in an April 2025 interview with WMAR-2 News.
The impetus to solving the case came from a member of Ahmad's family, as described by Hoffman and in police charging documents.
"In this case, [Zufall] was able to get in touch with a representative of the family who was able to relay some information that really broke the case open," Hoffman explained. "He was able to establish a relationship with members of her family, and the information they had, they felt comfortable relaying to him."
That information led to a chain of interviews, Hoffman added, including a critical phone exchange with an unnamed individual about 31-year-old Eddie Robinson, the suspect as detailed in the documents, and Snapchat message screenshots which provided greater context.
Police believe Robinson knew people living with Ahmad and her boyfriend in the Dovecoat Drive home.
How police made an arrest in a pregnant woman’s unsolved 2020 murder
According to charging documents, Robinson attended Ahmad's funeral and signed the guest book.
"We believe, through what our investigation has shown, that the couple that the suspect knew, that also resided in the residence, he had some ongoing altercation with that couple for a couple of different reasons. We believe that he fired warning shots into the house that were intended for that couple, those two people," Hoffman said.
But Ahmad, who wasn't the target of those gunshots, became the victim.
Police found Robinson in Gaithersburg on April 9, 2025. He faces murder, assault and gun charges, with a preliminary hearing scheduled for May 9.
RELATED: Suspect arrested in 2020 Howard County Cold Case
Hoffman emphasized that community cooperation is crucial to solving cold cases.
"In so many cases, we need that help from the community, from the family. From somebody who knows something. And that's what we got in this case," he said.
Howard County Police are asking anyone with information about other unsolved murders to call 410-313-STOP. The reward for information is up to $30,000.
This report was converted from its original broadcast television script to a web article with the assistance of an AI tool. A WMAR-2 News journalist thoroughly reviewed its contents before posting it to our website.
