A Portland man convicted of murder last fall in the hit-and-run death of his girlfriend was sentenced Thursday morning to serve 48 years in prison.
Raymond Lester, 37, was found guilty in November of killing Nicole Mokeme during a June 2022 retreat for Black people at the Schoodic Institute in Acadia National Park. Lester, who was dating Mokeme, 35, of South Portland, ran her over a few minutes before midnight on June 18, 2022 with his car and then fled to Mexico, where he turned himself in a few weeks later, according to police.
“Nicole was a pillar of her community,” her brother, Victor Davis, told Justice Robert Murray at Lester’s sentencing in Ellsworth. “Nicole was a great daughter. She was a great mother. The list goes on and on.”
Davis said the affected families deserve to sleep well at night, and urged the judge to give Lester a long sentence.
“His taking her life has affected so many lives,” Davis said. “I say contain the evil. Make it known to the world that this is not okay.”
Mokeme’s daughter, stepdaughter, father and mother also addressed the judge, sometimes through sobbing tears, as they made sure they were heard.
Through her nonprofit, Rise and Shine Youth Retreat, Mokeme sought to improve the lives of people around her, they said. Mokeme had organized the retreat at Schoodic Institute as a way to provide opportunities for Black people to spend time in the national park.
“She believed she could heal anyone,” her mother, Stephanie Kornegay, told the judge. Lester had a “darkness” to him, but Mokeme thought she could help him overcome it.
“She believed her purpose was to heal everyone,” Kornegay said. “She thought she could heal that darkness. Nicole believed in Raymond.”
Last fall, at Lester’s jury trial, attendees at the retreat at Schoodic testified that Lester was acting inappropriately, aggressively and abusively toward Mokeme in the days and hours before Mokeme died.
Some attendees told police that Lester was drinking vodka, playing loud music and driving fast around the campus while they ate nearby during a cookout. One couple testified that they and their daughter were scared Lester might run them over as his car zoomed back and forth where a walking pathway crosses a road on the Schoodic campus.
When some went to talk to him about his behavior, he pointed his fingers at them like a gun and loudly said “boom boom boom” over the lyrics of the song, witnesses testified.
Testimony about Lester’s past incidents, prior to the retreat, was not presented to the jury at the trial, but former girlfriends of Lester told the Portland Press Herald he was physically abusive to them before they ended their relationships with him.
Mokeme’s body was found at 6:20 a.m. the next day on a paved walking path on the Schoodic campus, police said. Tire tracks were found leading from a nearby parking lot, across a road and between two trees onto the walking path where Mokeme appeared to have been run over.
Pieces of black plastic that appeared to have fallen off a vehicle also were found near her body, according to the affidavit.
Police began looking for Lester and traced his cellphone to Rhode Island and, using data collected by roadside license plate readers, discovered that Lester had driven to Massachusetts the day Mokeme’s body was found. Additional information later showed Lester had driven to Georgia on June 20, 2022, and then to Texas a day after that.
Lester was taken in custody about a month later after turning himself in to local authorities in Cancun, Mexico.
