Still no body, but trial begins

Husband faces murder charges in death, disappearance

NEWPORT NEWS — Adrian Salvatore Lewis was jealous.

He complained when she went to the gym. He didn’t like her wearing leggings on an airplane, which he thought drew undue attention to her body.

And he raised eyebrows when he told other men at a party that he’d kill her if he caught her cheating.

But when Shanita Mikell Eure — a mother of two teenage boys — told Lewis in July 2022 that she wanted a divorce, he grew more vigilant: He monitored her every move. He put a tracker on her cellphone. He began attending church with her when he hadn’t gone in years.

“She said he won’t let her out of his sight, and he was smothering her,” a friend of the couple, Mitchell Foreman, testified Tuesday in Newport News Circuit Court. “Church is one of the few times that she could be away from him.”

Soon after one of those Sunday services — on July 18, 2022 — Eure disappeared.

Lewis was charged with first-degree murder in her death and his jury trial began this week. Unlike with most murder cases, it’s a prosecution without a body.

Church members at Gethsemane Baptist Church in Newport News saw Eure getting into Lewis’ pickup with him after an 8 a.m. service. She had planned to attend the 10 a.m. service — where she was to give a pep talk urging people to come to the pastor’s anniversary party later in the week — but never showed.

The couple’s two boys saw them leaving the house together at 9:40 a.m. that Sunday. Police said that was the last time anyone saw her alive.

Later that Sunday afternoon, Eure’s sister came across

Lewis throwing items into a dumpster. Police later found Eure’s purse and shoes in the receptacle, along with a shovel. Investigators also recovered Eure’s blood from his truck, a cartridge casing and other items.

With an alert issued for Lewis’ arrest, federal customs agents stopped him at Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia, where he was bound for Jamaica

Prosecutors contend Lewis knows exactly what happened to Eure, while defense attorneys with the Newport News Public Defender’s Office assert that he has no idea where she is.

Foreman was a crucial prosecution witness to open the trial. He and his wife were friends with Lewis and Eure for more than 10 years. Their kids were close as well.

When the families vacationed in Las Vegas together in the summer 2021, Lewis fretted about his wife wearing leggings on the plane. At a gambling table at a Las Vegas casino, Lewis was agitated that “he was losing money,” even as Eure was winning.

Foreman also recalled a disturbing moment at a Christmas party in December 2021. “He said that if he ever caught Eure cheating, he will kill her,” Foreman said. Others reacted awkwardly, hoping it was a joke.

“Everybody kind of had the side eye, glancing at each other,” he said. “He said that if we knew him we wouldn’t accept him for who he was.”

In July 2022, Eure and the couple’s two sons — young teenagers — went to visit relatives in New York and New Jersey.

When she came back, Foreman said, she told him she wanted a divorce.

“I was taken aback,” Foreman said. “But she said she was just fed up.”

Lewis later called Foreman, upset.

“He said he didn’t do anything wrong, and she must be cheating.” Foreman said. “He said he spent so much of his life and money and he can’t just let her walk away from this.”

But Foreman said he warned Lewis “not to do anything irrational or crazy.”

“I said, ‘You still have your sons going into their teen years,” Foreman said. “‘They’re going to need you.’ But he was just fixated on wasting 17 years of his life … He said, ‘I’m from the streets, and I will handle this the street way.’”

Lewis came to church services on July 10 at the Roanoke Avenue church — the first time he had attended since before the pandemic.

She told Foreman she found an Apple Air Tag in her car, which she saw as an attempt to track her. When Lewis saw Eure’s device at a bank making a deposit for church, Foreman said, Lewis accused her of being in an apartment complex nearby. Lewis was also trying to clone his wife’s phone.

Foreman said he “tried to counsel them both.” At one point, Eure told Foreman’s wife that Lewis was trying to kill himself. Foreman said he sent his friend Christian music to calm his mind.

And Foreman said Lewis told him that when he tried to approach Eure in the bedroom to reconnect, “she wouldn’t look at his face.”

One night, Foreman took Lewis out to a restaurant in Suffolk, and Lewis made him turn around because he thought he spotted his wife’s car parked outside another restaurant. But it wasn’t her car.

Lewis was also suspicious of an 8 p.m. appointment to get an MRI, though Foreman assured him that the time wasn’t out of the norm.

And even as Lewis accused Eure of cheating, he apparently was being unfaithful himself: Foreman said Lewis told him he “had a place set up” at an apartment complex where he worked so he could have women over.

Lewis and Eure attended a party at Gethsemane Baptist on July 16, 2022.

Lewis, Foreman said, was in a talkative mood that night. He asked to take a picture of him and Eure with the pastor and his wife.

“He was talking to people he never really talked to,” Foreman said. “Everything was a little different.”

He found it strange that as a picture was snapped, Lewis told everyone to “say Amen” in a jovial tone, rather than “cheese.”

At the church’s 8 a.m. service the next day, Eure took to the podium to urge people to come out for an event for the pastor three days later. “The time that has come been set by God,” she said enthusiastically to the gathered crowd. “I need everyone in place … Wednesday I need you guys here.”

Prosecutors played a Facebook livestream of that speech to prove that Eure “was very much alive” and looking forward to the future.

When Shanita didn’t show up for the 10 a.m. service — where she planned to make the same announcement — people began wondering where she was. Foreman’s texts to her number went unreturned.

Foreman said Lewis called him about 1 p.m.

“It’s over,” Lewis told him, according to Foreman. “I want you to look out for my boys for me. I’m going to Mexico and live on the beach. She wants me out of the house, so I’m leaving.”

Foreman said Lewis told him that his wife “admitted to cheating on me,” and said that he had text messages between Eure and a local podiatrist to prove it.

Foreman thought back to the threat to kill Eure if she cheated, and asked Lewis if he did anything to her. Lewis said the threat was “just bravado” and nothing more.

“He said she threw her phone at him and started walking down the street,” near the Wawa at the corner of Jefferson Avenue and Harpersville Road. But that didn’t add up, Foreman said, saying she wouldn’t walk away like that and “wouldn’t go anywhere without her phone.”

“Everyone is worried about her, no one is worried about me,” Foreman said Lewis replied at one point.

Worried about Eure, Foreman texted a number he saw on a text message on a frame grab that Lewis shared with him. He thought it might be the foot doctor’s number, but instead Lewis replied. “That’s my people’s number I had working with me on some stuff,” Lewis told him.

Eure’s sister began getting messages from her sister’s phone number that Foreman thought were coming from Lewis, and he urged Lewis to tell him what was going on.

“It didn’t make any sense to me,” Foreman testified. “I said, ‘You have two sons, you don’t want anything to happen to their mother.’”

At one point in the conversation, Lewis told Foreman he tried to call Eure and couldn’t reach her. But Foreman reminded him that he had her phone.

“Why are you questioning me like this?” Lewis asked him.