WASHINGTON – A man charged with killing 19-year-old college student Vanessa Pham approached her at a Falls Church, Va., shopping center while carrying his baby daughter and was high on PCP at the time, according to court documents filed in the case.
The Washington Post reports the man asked Pham whether he and his daughter could get a ride to the hospital.
Pham, a college freshman, agreed to take Julio Miguel Blanco Garcia and his 1-year-old baby in her car. But when Pham mistakenly took a wrong turn, Blanco Garcia — high on PCP — worried she would call police. Blanco-Garcia took a butcher knife from his backpack, and with his baby in the car, stabbed Pham more than a dozen times. He then fled with his baby, according to court documents obtained by the Washington Post.
Prosecutors filed more than 1,600 pages of records ahead of Blanco-Garcia’s trial, which is scheduled to begin Aug. 19, revealing the new details in the case.
Pham was killed after the chance meeting with Blanco-Garcia in the Fairfax Plaza Shopping Center on June 27, 2010.
Video surveillance showed her white, Scion tC hatchback exiting Fairfax Plaza shopping center at 3:24 p.m. on Sunday, June 27 — just 10 minutes before she was found inside her car in a ditch near Route 50 and Gallows Road.
The initial investigation turned up the blade of the knife and included a fingerprint. But fingerprint evidence did not produce any matches and the case went cold.
But the Post reports that late last year, investigators caught a major break – a fingerprint match came up for Blanco-Garcia after he was arrested for stealing three bottles of champagne from a Giant grocery store in McLean.
Three days later, Blanco-Garcia — who worked as a day laborer — was arrested at a job site in Vienna.
As NBC4 first reported, police searching Blanco-Garcia’s computer found that he had repeatedly checked on the progress of Pham’s homicide investigation. The computer showed visits to the Facebook pages of Fairfax County Police and America’s Most Wanted, to check on the case.
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