Attempted break-in suspect matches description of wanted man

SEATTLE – Seattle Police are searching for the suspect in a brutal stabbing in an off-campus housing unit that killed a UW student.

The backstory:

Officers say the 19-year-old transgender woman was killed in the laundry room of the Nordheim Court Apartments.

Some students who live at the Nordheim Court Apartments tell us that they caught a man breaking into their apartment in April, just a couple of weeks before the fatal stabbing in the same apartment complex Sunday.

Police investigate a fatal stabbing at the Nordheim Court Apartments on May 11, 2026.

They say the suspect in their case closely matches the suspect description in the deadly stabbing.

Students say the attempted break-in happened on April 25 in their lower-level unit of the Nordheim Court Apartments.

What they’re saying:

The three roommates that we talked to said they were terrified. They say they had cracked open the kitchen window to let some breeze in and the man had pulled out their screen, and was trying to crawl into the apartment when one of the roommates caught him.

“It’s definitely something that was very traumatic,” said one of the students, who wanted to keep their identity private for safety reasons.

They say when they first heard glasses rattling below the kitchen window on April 25 at around 10:17 pm, they didn’t think much of it.

“We did hear them and thought it was the cat and ultimately realized it wasn’t,” said the student.

One of the roommates ran into the kitchen and found a man halfway inside the window, the screen pulled out.

“My roommate who saw him screamed to get out of our house,” said the student.

They say that man backed out and fled while they called 911.

“I came running, and we all barricaded ourselves in my room at the back of the apartment,” said the student.

The students say responding officers found a knife, but the man was never caught. The case was logged as a burglary by the University of Washington Police Department.

“There was nothing done about the situation in general,” said the student.

Police investigate a fatal stabbing at the Nordheim Court Apartments on May 11, 2026.

Dig deeper:

When they heard about Sunday night’s deadly stabbing in their apartment complex laundry room, they were concerned.

“It was about 10:20 p.m., almost the exact same time as the murder that happened last night,” said the student.

They tell us the person they saw closely matches the description of the suspect in the stabbing case, which was released Monday.

The suspect in the homicide case is described as a black man, about 5-foot-6 to 5-foot-7 with a slim build and a beard.

He was last seen wearing a button-up shirt, dark vest and blue jeans.

“We’ve been living on edge since that happened,” said the student.

The roommates have since moved to an upper level unit at the Nordheim Court apartments for safety, but don’t live too far from the laundry room where the murder occurred, sharing video that shows the laundry room window, where the stabbing took place, which they say has since been covered from view.

The window of the laundry room window at the Nordheim Court Apartments is boarded up after a student was fatally stabbed.

“We do believe if my roommate hadn’t spotted him, and he lost his advantage, that he would have come inside and possibly done something to us,” said the student.

We reached out to SPD to see if they were looking at that April 25 burglary at the Nordheim Court apartments to see if they might be related. Seattle Police referred us back to the University of Washington Police Department, saying that it is their jurisdiction.

We reached out for more information from the University of Washington Police Department and are waiting to hear back.

We also reached out to Nordheim Court Apartments and are waiting to hear back.

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