A Florida grand jury had decided to charge 14-year-old Aiden Fucci as an adult with first-degree murder Thursday with prosecutors describing their decision as “the only choice” they could make.
State Attorney R.J. Larizza shared gruesome details about Tristyn Bailey’s murder on May 9, and how Fucci stabbed her more than one hundred times.
“There were 114 stab wounds,” the prosecutor told reporters. “One hundred and fourteen. At least 49 of those stab wounds were to the hands, arms, and the head and were defensive in nature.”
“The bottom line is that premeditation could be inferred, certainly, from just the sheer number of stab wounds that Tristyn Bailey had to suffer.”
Larizza revealed that the 13-year-old cheerleader was probably a random victim and that Fucci had repeatedly told people he was planning to kill someone within a month.
“He didn’t say who that was. But he indicated to witnesses that he was going to kill someone by taking them in the woods and stabbing them – which are certainly the facts of this case.”
The official expressed his frustration that even though Fucci made the disturbing threats more than once and to several witnesses, nobody ever reported it to the police.
Fucci, according to his friends and acquaintances, always carried a knife. That same knife was found broken, with its tip in Bailey’s scalp and its blade in his bedroom.
Blood and DNA samples from that blade, Fucci’s t-shirt, and shoes were positively linked to Bailey.
“To say that it was ‘horrific’ could arguably be made as an understatement. This could have simply been a case of the wrong place at the wrong time.”
