“I just killed someone and walked away,” an apparently deranged man reportedly told police Wednesday after he was arrested for stabbing a popular hairstylist to death with a steak knife in a luxury apartment parking garage in Sunrise, Florida.
Fort Lauderdale salon owner and yoga teacher Hailey Hosford, 27, was the victim of what police described as a random attack with no clear motive.
Authorities were holding Jackson Sagesse, 21, in the Broward County jail without bond this weekend where he is facing charges of Hosford’s murder and attempted murder of her friend, who bravely came to her aid.
“Hailey Hosford had stepped out of a rental car at the Retreat at Sawgrass Village in Sunrise, Fla., when she spotted an armed Jackson Sagesse begin to approach her just after 1:30 a.m. on May 28,” according to the report.
She “attempted to escape by jumping back into the rear passenger side of the car,” but Sagesse, a powerful man at 280 pounds, tore open the door and began stabbing her, according to an arrest affidavit obtained by the New York Post.
The attack was captured on a security video, which recorded Sagesse “making a repeated stabbing motion into the vehicle,” police said.
Meanwhile, Hosford’s friend, who police did not identify, had gone outside the garage to retrieve something, returned and battled with Sagesse, resulting in the man being stabbed in the neck, police said.
The friend fled and called police, while Sagesse could be seen on the security video trying to leave in the car but was unable to move it.
When police arrived, they found Hosford unresponsive inside the car. She had suffered multiple stab wounds to her neck and throat and was pronounced dead a half hour after the attack. Her friend was hospitalized but survived.
Sagesse was taken into custody and his answers in an interview with detectives were inexplicable, according to the Post’s reporting of the affidavit:
Sagesse, who gave inconsistent answers, claimed he was on his way to the gym when he noticed the car in the parking garage with its lights on. He said he attempted to call 911 about the vehicle but didn’t have his phone, so he returned to his apartment and allegedly grabbed a kitchen knife he used as personal protection. Sagesse said he was “murdering for self-defense” but failed to give an exact threat.
…
Workers at the Retreat recognized Sagesse from the surveillance video and pointed police to his home at the complex he shared with his mother.
“I just killed someone and walked away,” Sagesse told police.
Aubrey Rosebrock, a close friend of the victim, told Miami’s WSVN that Hosford appreciated “physical beauty as a cosmologist, but also the beauty in the world, in experiences, and the beauty of her friendships.”
Rosebrock also said she would have fought back during the attack, adding, “She was a force to be reckoned with.”
Hosford’s friend remembered the last time he heard from her, telling the station, “Her very last message to me was, ‘I just wanted to tell you that the sun is shining, the sky is blue, the water is turquoise, and that I love you much, and that you mean the world to me,’ and that was the very last thing she said.”
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
