A D.C. man was indicted Wednesday on five counts stemming from the March 2023 stabbing murder of a 31-year-old Virginia woman in Northeast D.C.
George Sydnor Jr., a 44-year-old from D.C., was indicted by a D.C. Superior Court on charges of first-degree murder while armed, burglary, kidnapping and other charges. The indictment included an aggravating circumstance enhancement on all five counts, which found the offenses to be “especially heinous, atrocious or cruel.”
On March 31, 2023, officers with the Metropolitan Police Department responded to a 911 call at the Ivy City Hotel in Northeast D.C., where they found Christy Bautista dead on the floor at the foot of the first bed. Sydnor was found sitting on the second bed covered in blood with cuts to his right hand, alongside a bloody knife, according to court documents.
An autopsy determined that Bautista, who was visiting D.C. from Harrisonburg, Virginia, for a concert, had been stabbed approximately 30 times. Bautista had been stabbed with so much force that the knife had left both sharp and blunt force injuries, piercing her liver, lungs, spinal column and breaking some of her ribs. The knife’s blade broke off during the attack.
The time that lapsed between Sydnor entering Bautista’s hotel room and when D.C. police arrived on the scene was 10 minutes.
At an earlier court hearing in June 2023, Sydnor’s defense attorney Jesse Winograd contended that this wasn’t a random encounter and his client was attacked first, which is why his hand was lacerated.
“The theory that he went and found a random person and randomly went into her room doesn’t hold up,” Winograd said.
However, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Santiago countered that Bautista and Sydnor did not know each other before he entered her room seemingly uninvited. She also said it was improbable that Bautista, at a height just over 5 feet, could have attacked the 6-foot-4 Sydnor first, and that Sydnor’s injuries occurred when he was stabbing the victim.
“He would be towering above her,” Santiago said. “And the force that he used not only broke the knife, but he managed to injure himself on his dominant hand, the hand that he would have had the knife in.”
Sydnor is scheduled to be arraigned on the indictment on Jan. 4, 2024.
