HALIFAX COUNTY, Va. -A teenager was sentenced to multiple life terms Thursday for two murders in Halifax County. Mohamed Aly pleaded guilty and received four life sentences plus 18 years for the shooting deaths of Joel Bianda and Ayanna Griffin on February 8, 2020.

Bianda had agreed to drive Aly from Alexandria to Danville. Griffin, Joel’s girlfriend, went along for the ride. Aly took a gun with him which he had picked up in Alexandria from a “marked location.”

Once they reached Halifax, Aly told Bianda to pull over. While Bianda was exiting the highway and while the car was still moving, Aly told investigators he “pointed the gun at his head, without thinking, without saying anything,” and pulled the trigger. A second later, he shot Griffin. He put the car in park in the median on Highway 58 near Melon Road, unfastened their seat belts and dumped their bodies in the median, then drove the car to Danville. Aly remembered he had left the firearm at the scene, so he returned with a friend to dispose of the victims’ cell phones and to retrieve and dispose of the murder weapon.

He hired a driver to pick them up in Danville and take them Virginia State University, where Aly returned to school. He posted on social media and acted as if nothing had happened until police linked him to the murders and he confessed to the crimes, offering no motive for the shootings.