‘There could have been other victims’: Disturbing new details emerge in UW student Juniper Blessing’s murder

Disturbing new details have emerged in the murder of the 19-year-old University of Washington student, Juniper Blessing.

Court documents revealed that the man charged in the death of Blessing, Christopher Leahy, was hanging around the neighborhood for days, and may have actually targeted other women before the attack.

KIRO Newsradio fill-in host Angela Poe-Russell said the details raised an unsettling question: how often do people leave their doors unlocked?

“It’s awful. I think with the new details about what led to this, I was really struck by the image of him trying other people’s homes,” Poe-Russell said on “The Gee and Ursula Show” on KIRO Newsradio. “He clearly was looking for an opportunity, and it made me think about how often we may not lock our doors. In this case, at UW, it sounds like there was some kind of open door, a way to access the laundry room from the garage. I mean, thank God there were cameras.”

Cameras helped lead to an arrest, but raise new questions about security

KIRO Newsradio host Ursula Reutin echoed the point about surveillance cameras but said the case raised broader questions about whether the university did enough to warn students.

“That is something the police chief also said, thank God there were cameras that helped them make the arrest,” Ursula said. “The other thing is, because of those cameras, there were great shots of the suspect. There could have been other victims, but it’s just so heartbreaking. They don’t believe she was targeted because she’s trans; it was more that she just happened to go into the laundry room when he was there.”

“The other woman who had seen him there had ducked into the laundry room for safety,” she continued. “There were other sightings of him, and I hope that as part of the investigation, they look into whether there was anything that we didn’t do that we could have done in terms of getting the word out, because we hear from students who are saying, ‘We don’t feel like some of our security concerns are being taken seriously enough.’ It’s just tragic and horrific that this happened.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to Gee and Ursula on “The Gee and Ursula Show” weekday mornings from 9 am to 12 pm on KIRO Newsradio.