<\/p>\n
USF doctoral students Zamil Limon and Nahida Bristy were reported missing on the same day.<\/p>\n
University of South Florida Police Department<\/p>\n
The body of a missing University of South Florida student was found Friday on the Howard Frankland Bridge, and authorities continued to look for another as they arrested a man described as a suspect in the case.<\/p>\n
Zamil Limon, a doctoral student who had been missing for eight days, was found dead Friday morning along the bridge that spans Tampa Bay, Hillsborough County Sheriff\u2019s Chief Deputy Joseph Maurer said.<\/p>\n
Nahida Bristy, Limon\u2019s friend and fellow student who disappeared the same day as he did, remained missing as of Saturday morning, though an announcement from the sheriff\u2019s office indicated they believe she is dead.<\/p>\n
The sheriff\u2019s office announced in an early morning news release that Hisham Abugharbieh faces two charges of first-degree murder with a weapon \u201cin the deaths of Zamil Limon and Nahida Bristy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEvidence was presented to the State Attorney\u2019s Office, resulting in further charges against Abugharbieh,\u201d the news release from the sheriff\u2019s office states. \u201cTo protect the integrity of the investigation, we will not be commenting on the findings in the case.\u201d<\/p>\n
He and Limon had lived together in an apartment north of the USF campus, where Limon was last seen on April 16.<\/p>\n
Sheriff\u2019s deputies arrested Abugharbieh after a brief standoff at a home in the Lake Forest neighborhood, off Bruce B. Downs Boulevard in North Tampa, Maurer said. Investigators had questioned him Thursday about the disappearances of Limon and Bristy. He spoke with them but then \u201cended the interview,\u201d Maurer said.<\/p>\n
Deputies were called for a report of \u201cdomestic violence\u201d about 9 a.m. Friday at his family\u2019s home in North Tampa, the chief deputy said. The family was able to leave the home unharmed as Abugharbieh remained inside, refusing to come out, Maurer said.<\/p>\n
The sheriff\u2019s office\u2019s SWAT team arrived. Deputies blocked the neighborhood entrance as a standoff ensued. A robotic dog and a remote-controlled vehicle could be seen moving about the neighborhood as a drone circled overhead.<\/p>\n
Amid orders to surrender, Abugharbieh walked outside, shirtless and wrapped in a blue bath towel with his hands raised.<\/p>\n
He was later booked in jail on charges that included battery, false imprisonment, tampering with evidence, failure to report a death and unlawfully holding or moving a dead body.<\/p>\n
He was not initially charged with murder, but that changed with the announcement Saturday morning.<\/p>\n
A screenshot from video released by the Hillsborough County Sheriff\u2019s Office shows Hisham Abugharbieh, 26, surrendering to SWAT team members at his family\u2019s home in the Lake Forest subdivision in North Tampa on Friday, April 24, 2026. Abugharbieh was arrested in connection to the case of two University of South Florida graduate students. One is dead, and police indicated that the other is also dead. <\/p>\n
It was unclear what evidence investigators had to link Abugharbieh to the deaths. Maurer said he could not answer some questions, stressing that he did not want to jeopardize the ongoing investigation.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for USF told the Tampa Bay Times that Abugharbieh pursued a Bachelor of Science degree in management from spring 2021 to 2023, but that he is no longer enrolled as a student.<\/p>\n
Hillsborough court records show that Abugharbieh was twice arrested in 2023 on domestic-violence charges, but both cases were dropped. That summer, his brother filed a petition for an injunction prohibiting him from coming near him or his home. The document described an incident in which Abugharbieh allegedly attacked his brother and their mother.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom late April to May 8, he would start screaming in the middle of the night about how he is God and we should all bow down to him,\u201d the petition states. A judge granted a two-year injunction barring Abugharbieh from contact with his brother.<\/p>\n
The brother sought a new injunction last summer after the first one expired, but that request was denied.<\/p>\n
Bristy and Limon, both 27, went missing within hours of each other on April 16. Both were international doctoral students who were from Bangladesh and were in the U.S. on student visas. The locations where they vanished are a little less than a mile apart. Limon was last seen about 9 a.m. at his apartment in the Avalon Heights student housing complex off East Fletcher Avenue, north of USF\u2019s Tampa campus.<\/p>\n
His brother, Zubaer Ahmed, described him as \u201cvery responsible and punctual\u201d in a message to a Times reporter. Limon had previously earned a degree in urban and rural planning from a university in Bangladesh.<\/p>\n
He came to USF in 2024 and was pursuing a doctorate in geography, environmental science and policy.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was scheduled to submit his thesis paper the day after he went missing, which makes this situation extremely unusual for us,\u201d his brother said.<\/p>\n
Bristy was last seen about 10 a.m. the same day in USF\u2019s Natural and Environmental Sciences building, near the center of campus, according to USF police.<\/p>\n
She spoke by phone with her parents in Bangladesh shortly after noon on April 16, her brother, Zahid Hasan Pranto, told the Times. She was in her office, a campus laboratory, and spoke of how busy her days were.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing unusual or out of the ordinary,\u201d Pranto said.<\/p>\n
That was the last time anyone heard from her. She missed a 3 p.m. class that day. She was supposed to go grocery shopping with a friend at 5 p.m., her brother said.<\/p>\n
Bristy left her laptop, iPad, bag and lunchbox in the lab, her brother said. Her purse and phone went missing with her.<\/p>\n
A person described by authorities as a family friend reported the pair missing the next day.<\/p>\n
The Hillsborough County Sheriff\u2019s Office took the initial report about Limon\u2019s disappearance. The USF Police Department handled the initial search for Bristy.<\/p>\n
Limon\u2019s brother told the Times that by Sunday, investigators had traced the pair off campus.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, the Hillsborough sheriff\u2019s office took the lead in the investigation in an effort to \u201cstreamline\u201d and \u201cexpedite\u201d efforts to find the students, the office said.<\/p>\n
Sheriff\u2019s deputies this week went door to door in the USF area handing out flyers about the disappearance. Law-enforcement officials had previously described the pair as \u201cmissing,\u201d but changed that description to \u201cendangered\u201d late Thursday without releasing more details. By then, the search spanned Hillsborough and Pinellas counties and drew assistance from several other law-enforcement agencies.<\/p>\n
The Florida Highway Patrol early Friday morning closed two northbound lanes of the Howard Frankland after Limon\u2019s body was found.<\/p>\n
USF Police Chief Chris Daniel, speaking at Friday\u2019s news conference, said campus officials \u201cdo everything we can to make the campus safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the last thing that we want to happen,\u201d Daniel said. \u201cOur hearts go out to the families, to the students at USF that knew these other students.\u201d Hillsborough sheriff\u2019s divers continued searching for Bristy in the waters near the bridge late Friday.<\/p>\n
Pranto described his sister as \u201ca very jolly person\u201d who got along with people.<\/p>\n
She earned a bachelor\u2019s degree in applied chemistry in Bangladesh. She applied to USF\u2019s doctoral program in chemical engineering last year and was accepted with full funding, her brother said.<\/p>\n
She is a talented singer and had professional musical training as a teen. She was supposed to perform in a Bengali cultural program in Orlando, her brother said.<\/p>\n
Her family did not know Limon, Pranto said. She had shared that she liked someone, but he didn\u2019t want to take the relationship further. They learned after her disappearance that she and Limon had been in a relationship for a while but had drifted apart. They remained friends.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was emotionally attached, but was trying to move on,\u201d Pranto said.<\/p>\n
Her family remains in Bangladesh.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t just go there and be physically present there,\u201d Pranto said. \u201cSo we are helpless and relying on others to get the updates. My parents are devastated and we are going through a very difficult time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anyone with information regarding Bristy\u2019s whereabouts is asked to call the Hillsborough County Sheriff\u2019s Office as 813-247-8200.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay Times staff writers Divya Kumar and Chris Tisch contributed to this report.<\/p>\n
This story was originally published April 25, 2026 at 1:00 PM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"USF doctoral students Zamil Limon and Nahida Bristy were reported missing on the same day. University of South…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-246539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}