The Martin County Sheriff’s office says authorities will seek the death penalty or life in prison for a 19-year-old college student who detectives say was found biting the face of a man after stabbing him and his wife outside their outside their Florida home.
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Parents Wade and Mina Harrouff issued a statement Friday expressing their condolences to the Stevens family and their apologies to Fisher “for the pain and suffering caused by Austin”. Bath salts change you, there’s no doubt about it!
Snyder said Harrouff was incoherent and making “animal-like noises” when he was taken to St. Mary’s Medical Center after the attack.
A neighbor was also injured after he tried to help the couple.
Austin Harrouff, 19, is unable to speak due to a breathing tube, according to the Martin County Sheriff’s Office.
The sheriff’s office is asking anyone who saw him in the area of Jupiter/Tequesta to call the sheriff’s office at 772-220-7060.
Harrouff has been charged with aggravated battery in the attack and Snyder says that, if the teen pulls through, he will be charged with home invasion and two counts of murder.
Harrouff is listed in stable but critical condition.
Austin Harrouff has yet to be charged in the brutal murders.
A neighbour who attempted to intervene said he was also stabbed by Harrouff.
“Obviously we don’t know what predicated these acts”. We will allow the full legal process to find the full facts and the truth here.
“While we respect the freedom of the press, we would ask the media to respect our own right of privacy at this very hard time”.
“Standing there last night, looking at that scene, I was forced to think about the futility of the whole thing – the randomness of it – as it began to become clear to us that there was no nexus between the victim and the suspect”, Snyder said in a press conference. His brother-in-law told the newspaper he was released from the hospital Thursday.
When police arrived, they found Harrouff hunched over the bodies of John Stevens, 59, and his wife, 53-year-old Michelle Mishcon.
Harrouff is now under sedation at a nearby hospital, and is in stable condition after undergoing multiple surgeries for an unspecified life-threatening condition.
“The big question we want to know, the community wants to know, is the why”.
According to Snyder, Harrouff “was abnormally strong”.
“As long as he is not under arrest, the hospital bills are his responsibility and his insurance”, Snyder said. However, the suspect tested negative for use of cocaine, methamphetamines, marijuana and opioid. Blood, hair and DNA samples have been submitted to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement which is expected to return results within one to three weeks, WPEC reports.
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Harris’s blood is being sent off to an Federal Bureau of Investigation lab in Virginia for further testing. “With the love and energy and friends and strength in this room, we’re gonna make it through”, said Jeff Mishcon, the father of one of those killed.
