Faith Hedgepeth murder trial: roommate testifies about finding body in Durham apartment

Karena Rosario testified for over two hours on the first day of witness testimony in the murder trial of Miguel Salguero Olivares in Durham, NC.

Roommate describes finding Faith Hedgepeth's body in emotional court testimony

The first day of witness testimony in the murder trial of Miguel Salguero Olivares concluded Wednesday in Durham, North Carolina, with Karena Rosario — Faith Hedgepeth's former roommate — spending approximately two and a half hours on the witness stand recounting how she discovered Hedgepeth's body inside their shared apartment in September 2012, abc11.com reports.

Rosario, 34, travelled from New Jersey to testify. She was one of the last people to see Hedgepeth alive on 7 September 2012, after the two returned from Club Thrill in Chapel Hill earlier that evening.

"I felt like she was like a sister to me"

Prosecutors asked Rosario to describe the close friendship she shared with Hedgepeth before walking her through the events leading up to the discovery.

"I felt like she was like a sister to me," Rosario testified, her voice quivering. "We were pretty much sharing everything at that point. We didn't have a lot of space. It kind of felt like, at least for me, I was on an island, just the two of us. Initially, it felt like a never-ending sleepover. We would stay up late and watch Disney movies."

When Rosario described entering the bedroom and finding her roommate, she became visibly emotional on the stand.

"I walked in. The comforter was off of the bed. It looked like it was pushed over to the left side, like on the floor," she testified. "And I just saw a couple slick spots of blood. I walked around the bed and I saw her hair, and I pulled the comforter down, and I saw that she had a black eye and she wasn't wearing anything from the waist down."

Rosario told jurors she has cooperated with investigators throughout what has become a nearly 14-year investigation and was first questioned by police the day after Hedgepeth's body was found.

"I felt like I was going crazy. This felt like I was living in a nightmare," she said. "One day I was just a normal college student. I felt like my whole life was split up. The one person that I wanted to be there was gone."

Family fills the gallery as trial begins

Before testimony began, Hedgepeth's father, Roland Hedgepeth, said he is ready for justice as the long-awaited trial gets underway. Family members occupied the second and third rows of the courtroom gallery, with a box of tissues placed between her parents as they listened to opening statements and witness accounts.

The state's first witness was Hedgepeth's niece, Alexis Evans, who helped establish a picture of who Hedgepeth was before her death. Evans described her aunt as her best friend — someone with a bubbly, outgoing personality who connected easily with others.

Prosecution and defence set out opposing arguments

During opening statements, prosecutors told jurors that the evidence in the case is "louder than the noise around it." They outlined plans to call witnesses who saw Hedgepeth in the hours before her death, as well as investigators who analysed DNA evidence collected from the crime scene.

Prosecutors argued that the defendant's lack of a known connection to Hedgepeth helps explain why the case went unsolved for years.

"This defendant was a stranger to Faith," a prosecutor told jurors. "The fact that he was a stranger is the reason it took years to find him."

Defence attorneys countered that the investigation was flawed and that evidence had been mishandled. They challenged the state's assertion that Salguero Olivares and Hedgepeth were unknown to each other.

"The state says they didn't know each other at all. Prove it," a defence attorney told jurors. "That's the burden the state is asking you to accept."

The defence also said it expects to call several witnesses, including Jordan McReery, a former UNC-Chapel Hill soccer player who collected Rosario the night before Hedgepeth's body was discovered, and a former downstairs neighbour who was allegedly awake watching television when she heard a loud thump on the morning Hedgepeth died.

Evidence and cross-examination

Jurors were shown photographs of the apartment Hedgepeth and Rosario shared, along with clothing connected to the investigation — including a tube top belonging to Hedgepeth that Rosario wore the night they went out, and the shorts Hedgepeth had worn to bed. Before court adjourned, jurors also reviewed five pages of Rosario's written statement to police, dated 8 September 2012.

The judge has ruled that defence attorneys cannot present Rosario as a third-party suspect during the trial. However, the defence is permitted to question her testimony and attempt to raise doubt about her account of the events surrounding Hedgepeth's death. Rosario also testified that she had never previously seen the defendant.

Cross-examination of Rosario by defence attorneys is expected to begin when testimony resumes Thursday morning.

Source: Google News MT — Crime (en)