Police reports and court records suggest a history of mental illness for Eliyas Agregahegne, 24, the suspect in the murder of Margery Magill in Washington, D.C. The 27-year-old UC Davis alumna was stabbed to death on the evening of Aug. 27.
Police reported last week that the stabbing appeared to have been a random attack. After hearing screams, neighbors in the city’s Park View neighborhood called the police. Magill, who had been out walking a dog, was found unconscious around 8:30 p.m. on Irving Street. She had stab wounds in the neck, back, shoulder and stomach.
Detectives followed a trail of blood from the crime scene to an apartment a quarter-mile away, the Washington Post reported. At the apartment, where Agregahegne’s father resides, the detectives found Agregahegne on a couch watching television.
According to an affidavit filed in the D.C. Superior Court, Agregahegne was bleeding from a cut on his middle finger when detectives found him. Police said they found what they suspect was a blood-stained T-shirt in the bathroom of the apartment. The shirt “appeared similar to the one worn by the suspect” as seen in a surveillance video from Irving Street, the affidavit says.
Detectives also found a pair of apparently blood-stained Nike sneakers under the bathroom sink. On the kitchen floor, there was “an empty opened ‘Armitage’ 8-inch knife package.”
Later, in a homicide interrogation room, Agregahegne “placed himself on scene and explained that a dark force was speaking to him from inside of his head,” a detective wrote in the affidavit. “At one point the Defendant stated that when he went back outside the voices were speaking to him and things ‘Got out of hand.’” According to the affidavit, Agregahegne told the detective, “I don’t remember stabbing her,” and, “I don’t think I stabbed her.”
Police Chief Peter Newsham said detectives have ruled out robbery or sexual assault as motives for the killing. They have not discovered any prior connection between the victim and suspect.
“This was a random, vicious, unprovoked attack on a woman who was stabbed multiple times and who was stabbed so viciously that her stomach separated from her aorta,” Magistrate Judge Rainey R. Brandt said on Aug. 29 while reviewing the charging documents. “The weight of the government’s evidence in strong.”
Agregahegne appeared in Superior Court on Aug. 29 and was ordered jailed pending the outcome of a preliminary hearing on Sept. 12.
Agregahegne was born in Ethiopia and moved to the United States with his parents when he was five years old. The Washington Post reported that he has a history of homelessness and has been hospitalized multiple times for mental illness.
Court documents in Montgomery County, Maryland showed he has been arrested at least five times for alleged trespassing and other minor crimes in recent years, the Washington Post reported. On June 14, 2014, police received a report of a suicidal man on the 600 block of Irving Street NW, about two blocks from where Magill was attacked last week.
Magill grew up in Yuba City. She studied International Agricultural Development at UC Davis and graduated in 2015. She had moved to Washington D.C. to intern for the Washington Center, where she was later hired to train people for study abroad programs like the one she participated in through UC Davis in Spain.
“Her incredible passion in the fields of food security and international agriculture will continue to inspire us,” UC Davis Chancellor Gary May said in a statement on August 29.
After graduating from UC Davis, Magill went on to earn a master’s degree from Westminster College in London. Her passion for travel and international development has taken her to more than 20 countries, her family says.
After moving to Washington D.C., Magill took on small side jobs to make extra money, including walking dogs through Rover, a pet services app, her family told Sacramento TV station KOVR. She walked dogs on Irving Street, where she was attacked on August 27, on a regular basis.