A roommate who survived the University of Idaho massacre has been described as “another victim” after court documents reveal she encountered the suspected killer on the night.
Dylan Mortensen, 21, awoke to sounds of muffled crying in the night and saw a masked intruder who walked past her towards the house’s sliding glass door, according to an affidavit unsealed last week.
The unsealed court documents – which list her as D.M – describe Ms Mortensen as being in “frozen shock” before she locked the door to her second-floor bedroom.
The surviving roommate saw the figure just after 4am but police were not called to the scene until around eight hours later.
Steve Gonçalves, the father of victim of Kaylee Gonçalves who was stabbed to death that night, describes Ms Mortensen as “another victim” in the horrific case.
“I think [she’s] another victim of this crime. My heart goes out to her, and she came up to me in different celebrations of life. And she showed herself to me that she didn’t behave in a fashion of somebody who was involved in something like this,” he said, speaking to NBC News.
He added that Ms Mortensen and another roommate, Bethany Funke, 21, were “so upset” that the initial 911 call around noon wasn’t “very legible”. He said that one of the two passed out when they discovered the victims.
Speaking of Ms Mortensen, he added: “She’s just a girl that was scared.”
Shanon Gray, a lawyer for the Gonçalves family, also described how Ms Mortensen was “scared to death” after coming face-to-face with the intruder.
“She was scared. She was scared to death, and rightly so,” she told Fox News.
“This guy had just murdered four people in the home.”
She added: “She’s a victim in this case. Everybody kind of forgets that. The Gonçalves family doesn’t have any ill will towards her or anything like that.”
Authorities believe the masked figure was Bryan Kohberger, 28, who has been arrested and charged in connection the deaths of Ms Gonçalves, 21; Madison Mogen, 21; and Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ms Kernodle’s boyfriend Ethan Chapin, 20.
A probably cause affidavit was unsealed on Thursday when suspect Kohberger appeared in an Idaho court for the first time.
It says Ms Mortensen was first woken just after 4am on November 13 by what sounded like Ms Gonçalves “playing with her dog” in a third-floor bedroom.
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Ms Mortensen locked her bedroom door after seeing the intruder, the document says. She and roommate Ms Funke did not call the police until 11.58am.
She described the figure as a 5’10” or taller male with “bushy eyebrows” who was not “very muscular” but had an “athletic build”.
Police said the surviving roommate’s statements, combined with phone records, led them to believe the killings took place between 4am and 4.25am.
Kohberger is being held without bail and has been charged with four counts of fourth degree murder and one count of felony burglary. His next pretrial hearing is scheduled for January 12.
