Six hours after Seattle police released photos of a person suspected of stabbing a University of Washington student in the laundry room of an off-campus apartment complex, a 31-year-old Bellevue man turned himself in to Bellevue police and was taken to Seattle police headquarters late Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Booked into the King County Jail, the man made his first court appearance Thursday, and King County District Judge Matthew York found probable cause to hold him for investigation of premeditated first-degree murder.<\/p>\n
Citing \u201cthe horrific nature and brutal execution of this attack,\u201d York made a finding that the man is substantially likely to commit a future violent offense and set bail at $10 million.<\/p>\n
Though defense attorney Todd Maybrown argued there was insufficient evidence to make a finding on premeditation required for first-degree murder, Senior Deputy Prosecutor Don Raz countered that the student, a 19-year-old transgender woman, was stabbed 40 times, demonstrating an intent to kill.<\/p>\n
The King County medical examiner\u2019s office identified Juniper Blessing as the woman who was killed.<\/p>\n
The University of Washington School of Music\u2019s website identified Blessing as a member of the UW Chorale, an advanced under\u00adgrad\u00adu\u00adate ensem\u00adble of music and non-music majors. Last year, Blessing was a soloist for the school\u2019s \u201cBlue Planet\u201d program. She graduated in 2024 from New Mexico School for the Arts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Human Rights Alliance in Santa Fe, N.M., shared a statement from Blessing\u2019s family, saying Blessing \u201cwas courageously living their life as who they were until it was cut tragically short.\u201d <\/p>\n
Blessing, who was born in Princeton and moved to Santa Fe in 2018, was majoring in atmospheric science and continuing to study music and philosophy at UW. Blessing had a \u201cgifted voice\u201d and worked as an usher at the Santa Fe Opera during summers. <\/p>\n
\u201cJuniper was simply the most amazing human being we have ever known \u2014 highly intelligent, extremely talented, and deeply sensitive to the needs of others,\u201d the statement said. \u201cJuniper\u2019s loss not only devastates us but diminishes the world.\u201d <\/p>\n
The investigation<\/p>\n
According to the statement of probable cause outlining the police investigation, officers were called a little after 10 p.m. Sunday to the Nordheim Court apartment complex at 5000 25th Ave. N.E., just north of University Village, after a resident called 911. They found Blessing unresponsive on the floor of the first-floor laundry room.<\/p>\n
An autopsy determined Blessing suffered 40 stab wounds to her head, neck, shoulder, arms and hands and died from blood loss, the statement says.<\/p>\n
Another female resident later told police a man had followed her as she walked to her apartment and so she ducked into the laundry room, according to the statement. The man claimed he was waiting for his laundry, then left, and the woman was able to go to her apartment, it says. She provided police with a suspect description.<\/p>\n
That encounter happened about 10 minutes before Blessing was found on the floor.<\/p>\n
Police reviewed video surveillance footage and saw Blessing take a bag of clothing and a jug of detergent to the laundry room a little before 9 p.m., then return an hour later, according to the statement.<\/p>\n
A camera inside the laundry room was found unplugged, but a police video specialist was able to recover footage from the camera\u2019s memory card that showed Blessing cleaning a dryer\u2019s lint tray when the suspect entered the room and looked directly into the camera, the probable cause statement says.<\/p>\n
Though the statement doesn\u2019t say whether the attack was captured on camera, it notes that no other person was seen entering the laundry room until the woman who called 911 entered and found Blessing.<\/p>\n
Photos taken from the footage were posted to the Seattle Police Department\u2019s online blotter on Wednesday afternoon<\/a>. Two tipsters \u2014 a relative of the suspect and one of his school friends \u2014 contacted police and provided the man\u2019s name and phone number, the statement says. The school friend also gave police a video of the man, and he appeared to match the person captured in the laundry room video, according to the probable cause statement.<\/p>\n The man, accompanied by his parents, turned himself in to Bellevue police around 10:30 p.m. Wednesday.<\/p>\n The Seattle Times does not typically name defendants until they are criminally charged. A charging decision in the case is expected Monday.<\/p>\n Personality shift<\/p>\n An old classmate of the suspect said the man went through a \u201cbig personality shift\u201d when they were at University Prep together, a nonprofit private school in Seattle\u2019s Wedgwood neighborhood.<\/p>\n The classmate, who asked to remain anonymous because they didn\u2019t want to be associated with a high-profile murder case, described the man as friendly and \u201csomewhat popular.\u201d<\/p>\n But in tenth grade, \u201cthere was a moment where the light went off a little bit where he wasn\u2019t social,\u201d the classmate said. \u201cHe went from him hanging out with us to him sitting by himself and reading books.\u201d<\/p>\n The boy had started to exhibit behaviors that were \u201cerratic,\u201d the classmate said. In one instance, he\u2019d given a lecture to his classmates about drawing boxes inside of boxes that made no sense.<\/p>\n Court records indicate that as a teen in 2012, the suspect and his parents sued University Prep, alleging the school failed to protect him from harassment and bullying by other students, including being called racist and anti-gay slurs.\u00a0He is identified as disabled and biracial in the complaint. <\/p>\n The lawsuit states the then-teen took a leave of absence during his junior year \u201cfor medical reasons related to the anxiety and stress caused by the bullying and harassment.\u201d <\/p>\n The family\u2019s lawyers wrote he \u201cwent from being a socially active teenager who attended school functions, to being a withdrawn young man who became an outcast that was excluded from social circles.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2012, he was not allowed to return to the school for his senior year, a move the family\u2019s attorneys argued was \u201cunwarranted.\u201d In 2014, the case was dismissed after the school settled with the family. <\/p>\n The suspect\u2019s parents paid over $25,000 in tuition to the private school for their son annually when he attended.\u00a0Court records indicate he went on to attend a boarding school in Ireland.\u00a0<\/p>\n Concerns for safety<\/p>\n An air of fear had settled over many University of Washington students in the days after the killing.<\/p>\n Students banded together. They offered to do laundry together and walk to and from classes in groups. Some laid flowers in\u00a0Red Square to honor the woman who was killed<\/a>. Turning Point USA\u00a0postponed an event at the university<\/a>\u00a0after the community decried the planned speaker\u2019s opposition to gender-affirming care for minors.<\/p>\n Others questioned their safety at Nordheim Court in particular.\u00a0One resident in the off-campus student housing complex, who spoke to a reporter, said her apartment unit had been broken into while she and her roommates were home, 15 days before the killing. <\/p>\n Residents also said it\u2019s relatively easy to get into the laundry room without an access code. Someone on foot could follow closely behind a vehicle entering the parking garage and walk through the building to the laundry room where the 19-year-old died, they said.<\/p>\n \u201cI hope the arrest brings some sense of relief to our community,\u201d said UW President Robert Jones in a statement. \u201cBut this arrest\u00a0does not\u00a0lessen\u00a0the profound\u00a0shock and\u00a0grief that\u00a0the victim\u2019s\u00a0loved ones and our campus are still experiencing\u00a0or\u00a0bring\u00a0back\u00a0a beloved,\u00a0promising\u00a0and talented member of\u00a0our\u00a0university.\u201d<\/p>\n Sara Jean Green: 206-515-5654 or sgreen@seattletimes.com<\/a>: Sara Jean Green is a law and justice reporter at The Seattle Times who has spent the bulk of her 25-plus years at the newspaper covering crime and courts.Lauren Girgis: 206-652-6591 or lgirgis@seattletimes.com<\/a>: Lauren Girgis is a law and justice reporter at The Seattle Times, where she reports on crime and public safety trends, prisons and juvenile detention facilities and breaking news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Six hours after Seattle police released photos of a person suspected of stabbing a University of Washington student…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[17389,8,9,7810,2451,7,17648,1337,11537],"class_list":["post-28931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-top-stories","tag-arrested","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-seattle","tag-suspect","tag-top-stories","tag-uw-student","tag-washington","tag-wpresize"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116576621870228583","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}