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SALT LAKE CITY — At a hearing on Thursday, a 3rd District Court judge ordered a teenager accused of stabbing and killing a woman after she confronted him about using a racial slur to stand trial.
Izaak Joseph Vijil, 17, is charged with murder, a first-degree felony; two counts of aggravated assault, a second-degree felony; and committing a violent offense in front of a child, a class B misdemeanor. Vijil pleaded not-guilty to each of the charges on Thursday.
The incident occurred on April 22 in Murray. The victim, Melissa Wood, 34, was interacting with young children near an apartment complex parking lot, and Vijil and others were heading toward her to get into a car, witnesses said.
According to testimony, Vijil used "the n-word" in casual conversation with his friends and he was told by Wood that he should not use that word, especially in front of the children. Witnesses said that the woman was visibly "angry and upset," and spoke with a serious tone. Wood also appeared to the witnesses to be drunk and was slurring her words.
Two witnesses who testified at the preliminary hearing were planning to drive Vijil, whom they said they had not previously met, and some of his friends to the TRAX station when the incident occurred. One of the witnesses attempted to deescalate the situation, and another got into the car and witnessed the incident through rear-view mirrors inside the car.
Both witnesses thought that Vijil was punching the suspect and did not know that he was using a knife and stabbing her until they saw that the victim was bleeding while Vijil was running away, according to courtroom testimony on Thursday.
A police officer testified that they later found Vijil with a knife in his pocket. At first, Vijil told them he had left the location after the woman confronted him, but that he later admitted he "went after the girl" and stabbed her a few times in order to protect himself, because she was yelling at him and he didn't know if she had any weapons, the officer said.
Wood was taken to an emergency room where she was later pronounced dead, according to the police officer. An autopsy report showed that she had been stabbed six times.
Vijil is charged as an adult and is being held at a juvenile detention center.
Vijil's attorney, Daniel Torrence, asked the court to keep Vijil at the juvenile facility, and said that he had mental health concerns that could become more serious if he is moved to an adult facility, which the judge said was not likely to happen without a hearing.
Torrence also asked the court to combine the two aggravated assault counts into count one, but the judge determined that this would be addressed at a later stage.
