Reporting Meghan McCorkell
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Stars With Tax ProblemsBOWIE, Md. (WJZ)– A young college student is dead, and another in police custody at Bowie State University. And now police say an iPod started it all.
Meghan McCorkell has reaction from shell-shocked students, on what’s supposed to be their homecoming weekend.
A shadow has been cast over those homecoming celebrations as students mourn one of their own. We’re learning new details about what happened inside that dorm room.
Flowers sit on the steps of the dorm where 18-year-old Dominique Frazier died.
Her 19-year-old roommate– Alexis Simpson– is behind bars, charged in her murder. Witnesses say the two had an altercation after Simpson turned off Frazier’s iPod.
The fight escalated. Roommates say Simpson pulled a knife and stabbed Frazier.
“She was leaning, and I saw all this blood covered on her side, and I was like, ‘Oh my God! What can I do?’ It looks like it was too late,” Donovan Settlas, a witness to the stabbing, said.
Frazier died at the hospital. Simpson later turned herself in to the police.
According to the charging documents, after the stabbing, Simpson told witnesses, “I didn’t mean to do it. You all don’t know what I’ve been through. You all jumped me.”
Friends say Frazier wanted out of the living situation.
“She asked for the transfer and apparently she didn’t get it. It could have been prevented if they had just given her the transfer. But it didn’t,” said one student.
The university canceled classes Friday, as well as a pep rally, instead holding a memorial service for students to talk about what happened.
Now, the band plays on as students try to continue with homecoming weekend. But the tragedy is tainting the celebration.
“This just casts a big cloud over the school,” Guy Foster, a senior at Bowie State, said. “We’re not known for this kind of violence.”
As they mourn one of their own, students want people to know this isn’t what their school is about.
“It happens everywhere. It doesn’t make Bowie different from any other school,” said a student.
The suspect, Alexis Simpson, is a transfer student. She is now charged with first- and second-degree murder and first-degree assault.
Bowie State University does plan to hold the rest of the homecoming activities this weekend.
