Orlando security guard found guilty of murder
Orlando FL Nov 22 2017 Two days before Sasha Samsudean was killed, her parents invited her home for dinner and made her favorite dish — her father’s browned chicken — with guacamole and salad.
Her brother, Kenny, was living in San Francisco, so Sasha called him on FaceTime and showed him the meal.
“I will never have a last supper with my daughter again,” her mother, Tara Samsudean, said Tuesday after an Orange County jury found a security guard guilty of killing her daughter. “I won’t have birthdays. Her father will never get to walk her down the aisle. I have attended a lot of weddings since then, and every wedding I attended I know we will never have that for my daughter.”
A jury found Stephen Duxbury, a security guard at the Orlando apartment complex where Sasha Samsudean lived, guilty of first-degree murder, attempted sexual battery and burglary. Judge Lisa Munyon sentenced Duxbury to life in prison.
Jurors listened to six days of testimony and arguments and saw prosecutors enter 101 items into evidence, including surveillance footage of Samsudean stumbling around the apartment complex after a night out; recorded police interviews with Duxbury; and Samsudean’s bedsheets, comforter, cleaning products and clothing. Jurors deliberated for about four hours.
Samsudean, 27, who lived at Uptown Place apartments north of downtown Orlando, was found dead in her bed two years ago, her shirt and bra ripped open and her larynx crushed. Her friends reported her missing because they could not get in touch with her after a night out. Orlando Police checked her apartment and found her.
Duxbury, now 35, was arrested about two weeks later.
“She’s attacked in the sanctity of her own home,” Assistant State Attorney Will Jay said in his closing argument. “Once she closes the door, she should be able to feel safe. Once she gets into her bed, she should be able to feel safe.”
Duxbury’s attorney, Aaron Delgado, argued the investigation left too many unanswered questions. Among them: not testing Duxbury’s clothing for DNA evidence and shoe prints attributed to Duxbury inside the apartment that appeared to match a size 9 Skechers sneaker found in Duxbury’s apartment when he said he wore a size 10 1/2.
“These shoes, same as the glove: If they don’t fit, you must acquit,” Delgado said, invoking attorney Johnnie Cochran’s phrase from the O.J. Simpson trial.
Duxbury declined to speak when the judge gave him the opportunity after the verdict.
Sasha Samsudean’s parents both expressed their sympathy for Duxbury’s mother, who sat through the trial in the back row of the courtroom.
“We do also feel for the parents of the man who took my baby away from us,” said Sasha Samsudean’s father, Ken Samsudean.
“There are no winners. They’ve lost a child, and that’s horrific,” Duxbury’s mother, Cindy-Lou Amey, said outside the courtroom. “I just feel bad for them; I feel bad for us. It’s important to be kind to everybody. There is a lot of hurt here.”
Sasha Samsudean returned home from a night out in downtown Orlando about 1:45 a.m. Oct. 17, 2015. She followed another resident into the building and walked the halls, up and down staircases, trying to find Apartment 345.
Duxbury, who became a licensed security guard in Florida earlier that year, was on duty that morning. After Sasha Samsudean walked into the building, he briefly spoke with the two women who brought her home, then found her wandering around the building, he later told police.
Duxbury’s thumbprint was found on Samsudean’s toilet lid and on her nightstand, and his DNA was found on her chest, records show. His phone records showed a Google search for how to defeat the keypad lock Sasha Samsudean had on her apartment door.
Sasha Samsudean’s family has a pending civil lawsuit against the apartment complex and the security company that employed Duxbury.
After the verdict, Sasha Samsudean’s mother told the defense attorneys, Delgado and Cheney Mason, she was hurt by their strategy, which included focusing on Sasha Samsudean’s sex life.
“We were beat up when we found out what happened, and we were beat up again in this courtroom by the defense,” Tara Samsudean said. “Why? Is that equal justice? I know justice was served today, and I thank everybody involved in it, but I don’t think it was equal.”
Tara Samsudean, an emergency-room nurse, said she has not been able to work since she took care of a rape victim and found herself saying: “You’re lucky you’re alive. My daughter was not lucky.”
“The moment I said that, I knew it was wrong,” Tara Samsudean said. “ … It took me 18 months before I could feel any emotion about what happened, and when I started to cry, it was bucketfuls of tears that came.”
Orlando Sentinel
