In October 2017, 20-year-old Alina Sheykhet was murdered in her off-campus apartment in Pittsburgh. Her former boyfriend, 21-year-old Matthew Darby, later pleaded guilty. There was no trial.
At the time of Alina’s death, Darby had a pending rape case in another Pennsylvania county involving a different girl, stemming from a February 2017 allegation. In March 2017, he was charged with rape, sexual assault, aggravated indecent assault, and indecent assault. He was free on bond.
On September 21, 2017, he broke into Alina’s apartment by climbing through her kitchen window. Her roommates scared him away, and he fled.
On September 26, police arrested him for criminal trespass in connection with that incident.
I worked the criminal trespass case. It was my job to assess his risk to the victim and the community and recommend the conditions of his release at arraignment.
Inside the system, the prior sexual assault case was visible. A Protection from Abuse order had been violated. The escalation was documented.
I contacted my supervisor and requested permission to override our risk assessment and seek a high monetary bond to delay or prevent his release. I was denied and instructed to recommend release.
I elevated the matter to the arraignment court manager, who trusted my professional assessment and relayed the concerns to the judge. A modest bond was imposed. It was posted immediately by his well-off parents.
That night, I told colleagues, “If he gets out, he will kill her.” I used those exact words. I was furious.
And I was right.
On October 3, 2017, just days after his release, Darby was charged in another sexual assault involving a 17-year-old girl.
Each incident followed more quickly than the last.
On October 8, 2017, Darby returned to Alina’s apartment. He broke in again.
This time, he murdered her.
That sequence is documented. It is public record.
If you choose to look it up, you will find photos of a beautiful young woman, radiant and full of life, smiling at a future she never got to live.
She was 20 years old.
Her murder was brutal. It was also preventable.
Alina’s death did not materialize out of nowhere. It followed escalating allegations and visible warning signs, the kind professionals inside the justice system are trained to recognize long before the public sees a headline.
But pattern recognition only matters if it changes outcomes. In this case, it did not.
I spent nearly fifteen years working inside Pittsburgh’s criminal justice system. My job required reviewing criminal histories, documenting risk factors, and identifying trajectories.
Over time, you begin to see the difference between isolated mistakes and escalation. Protection orders violated. New charges filed while prior cases remain pending. Behavior that intensifies instead of stabilizes.
Darby’s case reflected escalation.
Before Alina was killed, I documented my concerns in a contemporaneous case note. I noted the pending sexual assault charge in another county and the progression reflected in his recent conduct.
Based on that record, I sought detention, or at a minimum, a substantial monetary bond. My recommendation was overruled.
I was ordered to recommend his release.
I remember thinking what I had been trained to know. Escalation does not reverse itself. It progresses.
Documentation is meant to interrupt that progression, not simply record it.
I told my supervisor, “He doesn’t like women telling him no.”
I told colleagues, “If he gets out, he will kill her.”
Afterward, people asked me, “How did you know?”
My answer was simple: How didn’t you?
The warning signs were there. The escalation was documented.
She was never just a case file.
There are selfies, cheek-to-cheek with her mom, the kind daughters take without imagining they will one day become memorials. There are college videos and ordinary photos of a young woman building a life.
Nothing historic. Just life.
Alina was born in Ivanovo, Russia. Her family moved to the United States when she was 3.
She grew up dancing, disciplined, expressive, driven. When a knee injury ended her competitive dance career at 14, she rebuilt.
Rehabilitation inspired her to pursue a career in physical therapy. The dancer wanted to become a healer.
She was preparing for clinical work. She was building a future that had already required resilience once.
Her life was not defined by violence.
Her favorite color was purple.
Days after she was killed, her parents sat beside their attorney at a press conference. He wore a purple tie, the color associated with domestic violence awareness, as they asked why their daughter was dead.
They were never given the real answer.
But it exists.
And it is written here, nearly ten years later.
Instead of exams and internships, there were press conferences. Instead of living the life she was building, Alina was spoken about in the past tense.
Instead of becoming a physical therapist, she became a homicide statistic.
Alina’s murder was not a random act of violence. It followed documented escalation.
It followed release decisions. It followed a justice philosophy that treated detention as the exception, even when the record showed progression toward violence.
When release decisions ignore documented escalation, tragedy stops being unforeseeable.
This was not random. It was not fate. It was not unforeseeable.
When a system tolerates documented escalation in the name of reform, tragedy becomes the predictable endpoint of a trajectory no one was willing to interrupt.
Alina should still be here.
She didn’t have to die.
Kelly Rae Robertson is a former criminal-justice investigator with a master’s degree in criminal justice and a licensed mental-health professional. She writes on public safety, law enforcement, and accountability.
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