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Detectives with the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office join an investigation inside the Lake Forest subdivision of Tampa, Fla., on Friday, April 24, 2026, where authorities said a man was taken into custody after barricading himself inside a home, in connection to the search for two missing University of South Florida graduate students. (Douglas R. Clifford\/Tampa Bay Times via AP) <\/p>\n
ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 A body found in Tampa Bay has been identified as the second missing University of South Florida doctoral student from Bangladesh, a sheriff said Friday.<\/p>\n
Nahida Bristy\u2019s remains were found Sunday in a garbage bag discovered by a kayaker whose fishing line got snagged, said Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister. The positive identification on the badly decomposed body was eventually made using DNA and dental records, he said.<\/p>\n
The body of her friend, fellow USF doctoral student Zamil Limon, was in another garbage bag that was found two days before that on a bridge over the bay. Limon\u2019s roommate, Hisham Saleh Abugharbeih, 26, was taken into custody the same day and faces two charges of first-degree murder. He\u2019s been held in jail since then on no bond.<\/p>\n
Chronister said the suspect showed no emotion when investigators presented him with details of the killings.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was nonreactive,\u201d Chronister said. \u201cHe was callous and showed no emotion when we showed him the information we had.\u201d<\/p>\n
The two students were murdered around the same time and place, though detectives need to investigate further before they can decide that conclusively, the sheriff said.<\/p>\n
The sheriff said detectives didn\u2019t yet know a motive for the killings.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope we find that out,\u201d Chronister said.<\/p>\n
Chronister said content on Abugharbieh\u2019s phone had been erased, but a forensic examination revealed disturbing searches in the days before April 16, when Bristy and Limon went missing. The searches included phrases like, \u201cCan a knife penetrate a skull?\u201d and \u201cCan a neighbor hear a gunshot?\u201d<\/p>\n
The suspect had also purchased Lysol wipes and heavy duty contractor-grade trash bags and other equipment, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was calculating. That\u2019s what makes this so premeditated,\u201d Chronister said.<\/p>\n
A search of the apartment that Abugharbieh and Limon shared with a third roommate showed large traces of blood in the kitchen, leading down the hall to Abugharbieh\u2019s room and inside his room, the sheriff said.<\/p>\n
The luminol-based spray even revealed blood in the shape of a human body curled up in the fetal position, next to Abugharbieh\u2019s bed, he said.<\/p>\n
Limon was last seen at the off-campus apartment complex where he lived with Abugharbieh, and Bristy at a campus science building on that same day. Limon was studying geography, environmental science and policy, and Bristy was studying chemical engineering. Abugharbieh had dropped out of the university.<\/p>\n
Reached by email earlier this week, Jennifer Spradley, an attorney in the public defender\u2019s office in Tampa, said the office wouldn\u2019t comment on Abugharbieh\u2019s case.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Detectives with the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office join an investigation inside the Lake Forest subdivision of Tampa, Fla.,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254204,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-254203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254203","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=254203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}