DURHAM, N.C. (Court TV) — In a police interview played for the jury, a UNC student’s roommate told detectives what she saw when she returned home and found her best friend dead.
Karena Rosario speaks to detectives in an interview shown to the jury. (Court TV)
“What I don’t understand is why there was so much blood,” Karena Rosario told police in the recording. “Like, blood on the pillow, blood splattered on the wall, like someone had hit her or something.”
Prosecutors say Rosario’s roommate, Faith Hedgepeth, 19, was killed by Miguel Salguero-Olivares — a stranger who allegedly crept into the women’s apartment and beat her with a glass Bacardi bottle found there. Salguero-Olivares, 33, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, burglary, rape and sexual offense in Hedgepeth’s death.
In the recorded interview, Rosario walked Chapel Hill Police Officer Bryan Walker through her night with Hedgepeth on Sept. 6, 2012. The two women had gone to Davis Library on campus at 8 p.m. and, after doing some work, decided to go to “The Thrill,” a club where Rosario knew the person working at the front door.
Rosario said she was drunk when she left the club with Hedgepeth around 2 a.m. After returning home, she threw up and stayed in the bathroom for more than an hour, texting friends. When Rosario’s friend agreed to come pick her up, she said, “I got up off the floor, didn’t turn off the bathroom light, didn’t go back in the bedroom; just went straight out the door and told her I was leaving.” Rosario said she never actually saw Hedgepeth before leaving the apartment. “I just figured she was in the bedroom, either sleeping or watching TV. I didn’t even go back in there.”
The next morning, Rosario said she woke up at her friend’s house and began calling Hedgepeth because she needed a notebook that contained her essays for class. “I called her at least 14 times,” Rosario said, before another friend drove her back to her apartment.
Miguel Salguero-Olivares sits in court on Oct. 12, 2026. (Court TV)
“I just turned the knob; the door was open. Walked in, the bathroom light was still on,” Rosario said. When she reached the bedroom, Rosario said she didn’t realize anything was wrong at first. “And then I started to process everything,” she said. “I at first saw that the comforter was, like, off the bed. So I kind of walked to that side, because she usually sleeps on the left side of the bed and I always sleep on the right. And then I see her hair. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I just thought she had passed out, like she had rolled off the bed and passed out. Like, I didn’t think anything. 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 saw that she had a black eye. I didn’t think she was dead, though.”
Salguero-Olivares’ defense suggested during opening statements that Rosario may have been involved in Hedgepeth’s death, telling jurors that the friend who picked Rosario up in the middle of the night noticed blood on Rosario’s hand. Walker asked her about the blood in the interview. “I mean, I was throwing up red stuff,” Rosario said, adding that she had been spotting in the days before her roommate’s death.
Rosario became emotional multiple times during the interview, describing the victim as her closest friend. “She’s more than a best friend,” she said. “She’s everything to me.”
