Defense attorneys look to question roommate in 2012 murder of UNC sophomore Faith Hedgepeth
In court documents filed this week, defense attorneys for Miguel Enrique Salguero-Olivares, accused of beating and killing UNC-Chapel Hill sophomore Faith Hedgepeth in 2012, want to question her roommate at the time.
Defense attorneys filed a motion to bring Karena Rosario forward as an out-of-state witness in the case. They say Rosario and Hedgepeth lived together at the time of Hedgepeth’s murder in 2012, and Rosario has given inconsistent or untrue statements since the killing.
Attorneys for Salguero-Olivares say in the very early morning hours of September 7th, 2012, Rosario and Hedgepeth went to a Chapel Hill bar together. They say Rosario got drunk and Hedgepeth did not, so she drove them home. Once home, court documents say Rosario told police she sat in the bathroom of their apartment from 3:05 a.m. until around 4:25 in the morning, when she asked someone named Jordan McCrary to come pick her up. Rosario told police only she and Hedgepeth were home at the time, and there were no disturbances.
This timing is crucial, attorneys argue, because it shows Rosario told police she was the only other person in the apartment around the time Hedgepeth was killed. They also point to a text message she sent to McCrary saying, “I’ve been hit.” When McCrary picked her up, both Rosario and McCrary say Rosario had blood on her finger, but couldn’t explain why.
Police “examined and photographed Karena’s hands to determine if there was any reason she may have been bleeding when she got into Jordan’s car. No visible cut or injury that would have caused her to bleed was seen,” documents say.
The documents also point to a blood mark on the wall of the bathroom where Rosario claimed to have been sitting. Documents say: “[Police] also observed reddish stains in the bathroom around the sink. Two swabs collected from the sink area gave a presumptive positive indication for blood.”
Defense attorneys go on to question the shirt Rosario was wearing the night of the murder. She told police, according to the court documents, she left that shirt at McCrary’s home after he picked her up. But defense attorneys say the shirt was actually found partially underneath Hedgepeth’s body.
The motion goes on to say that messages sent from Hedgepeth’s phone around the time of her murder “were more likely written and sent by Karena.” They point to longer messages than Hedgepeth normally sent, and phrases she wasn’t known to use.
Notably, the document also says the phrase “I’m not stupid” was found written on a bag next to Hedgepeth’s body. That’s notable, defense attorneys say, because Rosario used that phrase several times in interviews with police. They also say she lacked emotion, and point to one investigator’s report. That investigator wrote that he was in the apartment with Rosario while the bloody mattress was still in there, and Rosario “showed absolutely no emotion. She never got upset about what she was seeing and just looked at the mattress like it was any other irrelevant object.”
Defense attorneys argue that all these things together raise new questions. Because of that, they’re asking a judge to require Rosario to come to North Carolina and be present for a court hearing in the case.
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