Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY — More than a year after prosecutors charged Ayoola Adisa Ajayi with murdering 23-year-old Utah college student Mackenzie Lueck, a judge on Monday set a hearing to decide whether they have enough evidence to go to a trial.
Third District Judge Vernice Trease ordered a three-day preliminary hearing to start Oct. 28, a development that comes after months of delays as attorneys have argued that investigators needed more time to sort through the evidence.
Ajayi is charged with aggravated murder, a capital offense, after prosecutors say he bound Lueck’s hands with zip ties, bludgeoned her and burned her body in June 2019. He could potentially face the death penalty if convicted.
Police said Lueck, a University of Utah student from El Segundo, California, met Ajayi about 3 a.m. on June 17 at Hatch Park in North Salt Lake before going to his house in the Fairpark neighborhood of Salt Lake City. Prosecutors say the two texted in the hours before they met and just before a Lyft dropped Lueck there, but have not said how the two knew each other or why they were at the park that night.
Lueck was reported missing three days later. Then on July 3, 2019, her charred remains were found by police in a shallow grave in Logan Canyon. Investigators tracked Ajayi’s cellphone and found it had been there a little more than a week earlier, charging documents say.
An autopsy determined that Lueck died of blunt force trauma to the left side of her skull that caused fatal brain hemorrhaging.
Related:
Court documents outline new details in Mackenzie Lueck murder case
Were witnesses at the house where body was burned and was another woman at the park where police say she met her killer?Ajayi has not yet entered pleas to the charges of aggravated murder and aggravated kidnapping, first-degree felonies; desecration of a human body, a second-degree felony; plus obstruction of justice, a third-degree felony.
A 32-year-old U.S. citizen originally from Nigeria, he previously waived his right to a speedy hearing.
On Monday, he wore an orange jail uniform, glasses and a green face mask in the brief hearing held via videoconference from the Salt Lake County Jail. Court dates like Monday’s and the upcoming preliminary hearing are currently being held remotely under coronavirus restrictions in the state court system.
