DURHAM, N.C. (Court TV) — A North Carolina jury is deliberating the fate of a man prosecutors say broke into a UNC student’s home and killed her.
Miguel Salguero-Olivares sits in court during closing arguments on Oct. 22, 2026. (Court TV)
Miguel Enrique Salguero-Olivares has pleaded not guilty to multiple charges, including murder, rape and burglary in the death of Faith Hedgepeth, 19.
In her closing argument to the jury, prosecutor Angela Garcia-Lamarca described what she believes happened in the early hours of Sept. 7, 2012, when Hedgepeth and her roommate, Karena Rosario, returned home. Garcia-Lamarca suggested that the defendant had been attending a cookout nearby and decided to approach the women:
It’s not a leap to suggest that he came up to try to engage and Faith said, ‘What are you, stupid? Can you not see? She’s sick. Go away.’ And then she takes Karena upstairs and he’s angry and embarrassed and humiliated in front of his friends.
Hedgepeth and Rosario had returned home from a night out at a club; Rosario had been drinking, and Hedgepeth escorted her upstairs after driving them both home. Rosario said she left with a friend who came to pick her up after she threw up in the bathroom, and presumed that Hedgepeth was asleep in her room when she left.
The next day, Rosario found Hedgepeth beaten to death in the bed the roommates shared in the small apartment. “I just thought she had passed out, like she had rolled off the bed and passed out,” Rosario said in a police interview shown to the jury during the trial. “And then I started to see red blood, like red stuff on the pillows and the wall and then I pulled the sheet down and I saw that she had a black eye.”
Testimony at the trial revealed that Hedgepeth had been beaten to death with a Bacardi bottle that was found near her body.
Salguero-Olivares’ attorneys urged the jury not to jump to conclusions, arguing that “tunnel vision” had led to the charges against their client. In his closing argument, Jason Murphy, one of the defendant’s attorneys, suggested that Salguero-Olivares had consensual sex with Hedgepeth in the days before she was killed, and that the DNA from that interaction was simply spread to other items in the room. “If, as the state contends, Faith was wearing those boxers, she was wearing them in bed with the sheets,” Murphy said. “DNA transfers. DNA transfers sometimes when we touch things from bodily fluids.”
Garcia-Lamarca urged the jurors to use common sense in the deliberation room. “The forensic evidence in this case is screaming the truth,” she said. “We know what happened. We know who did it.”
“It’s ridiculous. It doesn’t make any sense,” said James Rainsford, another of Salguero-Olivares’ attorneys, in his closing argument. “They have not proved their case.”
Salguero-Olivares’ defense tried to point suspicion at Rosario, noting that the friend who picked her up noticed a spot of blood on her hand. Prosecutor Lisa Coltrain attacked that theory, insisting there were no scratches or injuries found on Rosario’s body. “This theory of Karena being involved falls apart when you use your reason and common sense,” she said, arguing the evidence in the case pointed squarely at the defendant. “He beat her. He beat her. He beat her again, and again, and again, until he could get what he wanted. He beat her until her skull cracked like an egg. That young girl didn’t have a chance.”
The jury is scheduled to resume its deliberations on Friday.
