Authorities in Florida have arrested a man previously charged sexually abusing a child with the murder of a teenager who was found barely clinging to life in a utility closet on July 4.
Rose Thalie Dieujuste, 13, was rushed to a hospital, where she died from her injuries, according to WESH.
Orange County Sheriff John Mina said Jerry Loreeson Dorisme, 28, was arrested Thursday night and has been charged with first degree murder in Dieujuste’s death.
Mina said Dorisme, from Haiti like his victim, was charged with lewd and lascivious molestation of a child in 2021, but that charge was dropped when he pleaded no contest to child abuse and was sentenced to a year and a day in prison.
The sheriff said that Dieujuste disappeared while on her way to a friend’s apartment in the complex where she lived on July 4. When she didn’t arrive, the friend went looking for her and found her phone and shoes on the staircase. The friend called her family, and they began looking for her, going door to door asking if anyone had seen her.
At about 2:30 p.m., they found her in a utility closet, half naked and barely alive from a stabbing.
Witnesses told deputies about a man they’d seen leaving the building, and detectives found security footage showing a suspect following the teen girl from a distance.
Then they found store packaging from a 12-inch knife, believed to have been used in the attack, and then video showing the suspect, later identified as Dorisme, buying it at a nearby store.
Mina also said that investigators received several tips about the identity of the suspect — including one from Dorisme’s father.
“Rose’s murder shook our community and our agency,” Mina said. “Anytime a child is murdered, we all collectively grieve.”
Dieujuste was a student at Memorial Middle School in Orange County, WOFL said. She and her family came to the area from Haiti about a year ago. Investigators say that the suspect did not know her.
