Newly released surveillance video captures the final minutes before a 19-year-old University of Washington student was stabbed to death in the laundry room of an off-campus housing complex, and shows the accused killer methodically tracking the security camera before unplugging it, the New York Post reported.
Christopher Leahy, 31, faces a first-degree murder charge in the May 10 killing of Juniper Blessing at the Nordheim Court student housing complex in Seattle. Leahy was not enrolled at the university. Prosecutors say he had spent days trying to force his way into private homes and campus buildings before he found his way into that laundry room.
The case lays bare a grim sequence: a non-student intruder roaming freely through a college housing facility, a security camera that captured every warning sign, and a young student left alone with a predator who knew exactly how to go dark.
The footage, released by the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office to KOMO-TV News, reconstructs the attack in stark detail. Around 9:45 p.m. on May 10, Leahy entered the Nordheim Court laundry room behind another student. He left abruptly.
He returned around 10 p.m. This time, Blessing was visible on camera, sitting on the floor in front of a dryer. A male student was also present. Leahy exited the laundry room alongside that male student, leaving Blessing alone.
Minutes later, Leahy came back a final time.
Prosecutors said Leahy "appears to follow the path of the power cord with his eyes and head from the camera around the wall above the doorway." He then unplugged the camera. What happened next was not recorded, but another student walked into the laundry room moments later and found Blessing bloodied on the floor. That student called 911.
The New York Post headline described the attack as involving 40 stab wounds. That figure does not appear in the body of the reporting, and it remains unclear whether it comes from a medical examiner's finding or a prosecutorial filing.
The laundry room attack was not an isolated act. Casey McNerthney, a representative for the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office, told KOMO-TV that Leahy had been prowling the area for days before the killing.
"Police indicate that there were attempts by the defendant to try to enter private homes in Ravenna in the days before the homicide."
Ravenna is the Seattle neighborhood near the university campus. McNerthney added that Leahy had also targeted university property directly.
"There was at least one other campus building that police say he attempted to get into before the death of Juniper on the 10th."
The specific dates, locations, and outcomes of those attempted entries have not been disclosed. But the pattern prosecutors describe is clear: a 31-year-old man with no connection to the university spent days testing doors across a residential neighborhood and a college campus before he found one that was open.
That pattern raises hard questions about campus security and the systems meant to keep non-students out of student housing. Nordheim Court had surveillance cameras in its laundry room, cameras that captured Leahy's face, his movements, and his deliberate effort to disable them. But no one intervened before Blessing was left alone with him.
Violent crime on or near college campuses has drawn renewed scrutiny in recent months. In Florida, prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against a man charged in the killings of two Bangladeshi doctoral students, another case that exposed the vulnerability of students in settings they should be able to trust.
Two days after the killing, on May 12, Leahy turned himself in to police. The surrender came after investigators released security camera photos of the suspect to the public. Those images, pulled from the same cameras Leahy tried to defeat, led directly to his identification.
He was charged with first-degree murder. A court hearing was scheduled for Thursday, but the proceeding was delayed after Leahy's defense attorney requested additional time for mental health evaluations. The defense lawyer's identity has not been publicly reported.
No motive has been disclosed. Prosecutors have not said whether Leahy and Blessing had any prior contact. The weapon used in the stabbing has not been identified in public filings.
The case echoes a broader pattern of violent intruders gaining access to spaces where residents have every reason to feel safe. In New York, police recently arrested a man who allegedly broke into a Brooklyn neighbor's apartment and sexually assaulted her, another reminder that physical security failures carry devastating consequences.
Blessing, 19, was born Michael Carneiro da Cunha Blessing in Princeton, New Jersey. The family moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 2018, and Blessing attended the New Mexico School of Arts until 2024 before enrolling at the University of Washington.
The family released a statement through the Human Rights Alliance:
"Our family has been shattered by the loss of our child, Juniper Blessing, to an act of unspeakable violence near the University of Washington campus in Seattle."
They described Blessing in terms no parent should have to write in the past tense:
"Juniper was simply the most amazing human being we have ever known, highly intelligent, extremely talented, and deeply sensitive to the needs of others. Juniper's loss not only devastates us but diminishes the world."
Those words carry weight that no policy debate can fully absorb. A 19-year-old was doing laundry at a student housing complex. That should be one of the most ordinary, unremarkable things a college student does.
The case at Nordheim Court is far from the only recent tragedy involving students and violent crime. In Tampa, authorities confirmed that remains found near a bridge belonged to a missing USF student, underscoring the dangers students face beyond the classroom.
The surveillance footage is the prosecution's backbone. It shows Leahy entering and exiting the laundry room multiple times. It shows him studying the camera. It shows him unplugging it. And it shows the gap, the minutes of darkness between his final return and the moment another student found Blessing on the floor.
What it does not show is anyone stopping him. Not when he first entered the building. Not when he left and returned. Not when he looked up at the camera with apparent intent.
Prosecutors have not explained how a 31-year-old non-student accessed a student housing laundry room on multiple occasions in a single evening. The university has not publicly addressed what access controls, if any, were in place at Nordheim Court. Those are questions that deserve answers, not just for the prosecution's case, but for every student still living there.
Across the country, violent incidents have forced communities to confront similar failures. In North Carolina, a teen was charged as an adult in the shooting deaths of her parents and grandmother, a case that shook a community and raised its own questions about warning signs missed.
The mental health evaluation delay means Leahy's next court appearance remains unscheduled. The motive remains unknown. The investigation is ongoing.
But the video is not ambiguous. It shows a man who cased a room, identified a target, studied a camera, disabled it, and returned. Whatever the court ultimately decides about Christopher Leahy's mental state, the footage tells the story of a deliberate act, and of a system that watched it unfold in real time without lifting a finger.
Cameras that record a killing but don't prevent one aren't security. They're evidence of its absence.
