Human remains discovered Sunday near the shoreline\u00a0in an area of north\u00a0St. Petersburg\u00a0are those of missing\u00a0University of South Florida\u00a0student Nahida Bristy,\u00a0Hillsborough\u00a0Sheriff\u00a0Chad Chronister\u00a0confirmed Friday.<\/p>\n
A kayaker who was fishing on the shoreline near\u00a0Interstate 275\u00a0and\u00a0Fourth Street North, just south of the\u00a0Howard Frankland Bridge, got his line snagged on a black trash bag that contained Bristy\u2019s body, Chronister said at a news conference. She\u2019d been stabbed multiple times.<\/p>\n
Investigators used DNA testing and dental records to identify the body, Chronister said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur community has been left heartbroken and the victims\u2019 families shattered after this tragic loss,\u201d the sheriff said.<\/p>\n
Bristy and her friend\u00a0Zamil Limon, both 27, went missing on\u00a0April 16. Limon\u2019s body was found\u00a0April 24\u00a0on the\u00a0Howard Frankland Bridge, also in a large black trash bag and with stab injuries, records state.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs gruesome as this murder was, he was literally left on the side of the highway like a piece of trash,\u201d Chronister said.<\/p>\n
The same day, the Hillsborough County Sheriff\u2019s Office\u00a0arrested\u00a0Hisham Abugharbieh, 26, in connection to the case. By Saturday, detectives presumed Bristy was also dead and announced that Abugharbieh would be charged with two counts of first-degree murder.<\/p>\n
Hillsborough County\u00a0sheriff\u2019s divers searched the waters near the bridge, and on Sunday night the agency confirmed that they\u2019d located a second body in the waters near\u00a0Interstate 275\u00a0and\u00a0Fourth Street\u00a0North. The remains were taken to the Pinellas County Medical Examiner\u2019s\u00a0Office\u00a0for identification.<\/p>\n
According to an arrest affidavit, Bristy\u2019s body, like Limon\u2019s, had multiple stab injuries and was found in a large black trash bag tied off with a knot. The body was also clad in clothing similar to what Bristy was wearing when she was last seen.<\/p>\n
During a status hearing Tuesday morning,\u00a0Abugharbieh\u2019s public defender waived a pretrial detention hearing, and Judge\u00a0J. Logan Murphy\u00a0agreed to have him be held in jail without bail.<\/p>\n
Abugharbieh and Limon had lived together in an apartment north of the USF campus, where Limon was last seen.<\/p>\n
Sheriff\u2019s deputies arrested Abugharbieh on\u00a0April 24\u00a0after a brief standoff at his family\u2019s home in the\u00a0Lake Forest\u00a0neighborhood, off\u00a0Bruce B. Downs Boulevard\u00a0in\u00a0North Tampa. Investigators had questioned him the day before about the disappearances of Limon and Bristy, officials said.<\/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. Two counts of first-degree murder were later added, along with additional counts of evidence tampering, failing to report a death and unlawfully moving a body in connection to Bristy\u2019s remains.<\/p>\n
Hillsborough\u00a0sheriff\u2019s investigators found what tested positive for blood in the apartment Limon and Abugharbieh shared with a third roommate in the\u00a0Avalon Heights\u00a0apartments, an off-campus complex where USF students live.<\/p>\n
A search warrant for Abugharbieh\u2019s phone revealed several inquiries to ChatGPT starting about three days before the pair disappeared, according to court records. To the first inquiry sent on\u00a0April 13\u00a0about placing a \u201chuman\u201d in a dumpster, the popular artificial intelligence program responded that \u201cit sounds dangerous,\u201d according to court records. A follow-up message asked, \u201cHow would they find out?\u201d<\/p>\n
Hillsborough State Attorney\u00a0Suzy Lopez\u00a0and\u00a0Florida\u00a0Attorney General\u00a0James Uthmeier\u00a0announced in a news release Wednesday that their respective offices would work together to examine Abugharbieh\u2019s interactions with ChatGPT and \u201cassess whether those interactions contributed to the commission of crimes, and evaluate any potential legal responsibility of ChatGPT and its developer, OpenAI.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chronister said investigators are still working to determine a motive in the killings.<\/p>\n
Abugharbieh pursued a Bachelor of Science degree in management from spring 2021 to 2023, but he is no longer enrolled as a student, according to USF.<\/p>\n
This is a developing story. Check\u00a0tampabay.com\u00a0for updates.<\/p>\n
\u00a92026 Tampa Bay Times. Visit\u00a0tampabay.com. Distributed by\u00a0Tribune Content Agency, LLC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Human remains discovered Sunday near the shoreline\u00a0in an area of north\u00a0St. Petersburg\u00a0are those of missing\u00a0University of South Florida\u00a0student…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254334,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[28,29,114,115,109,202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-254333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-florida","tag-florida-news","tag-latest-headlines","tag-news","tag-social","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254333","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=254333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}