Prosecutors: Vanessa Pham's Good Deed Led to Her Death

Accused killer approached with baby daughter, asked for ride to hospital

Documents just filed in court in Fairfax County suggest a teenager stabbed to death in 2010 was doing a good deed when she encountered her killer.

In the search for Vanessa Pham’s killer, police released surveillance video of the victim driving away from a nail salon shortly before her death. In court documents filed ahead of the Aug. 19 trial of Julio Miguel Blanco Garcia, the prosecution says he was already in the car with his baby daughter.

Minutes before Pham’s car was captured by that Fairfax Plaza surveillance camera June 27, 2010, Blanco Garcia approached her with his 1-year-old girl and asked for a ride to the hospital. In an interview with police after his arrest 2 ½ years later, Blanco Garcia said he was high on PCP that day and when Pham took a wrong turn, he became worried, removed a butcher knife from his backpack and repeatedly stabbed Pham, according to court documents.

The 19-year-old college freshman and aspiring fashion designer was stabbed more than a dozen times, and her car veered into a ditch along Arlington Boulevard.

Blanco Garcia fled with his daughter, and it wasn’t until December 2012 that he was arrested after fingerprints linked him to the car.

As News4 exclusively reported Monday, prosecutors will point to DNA found on the knife in the car as proof Blanco Garcia was the killer.

The more than 1,600 pages of evidence filed by prosecutors led Blanco Garcia's lawyers to ask that charges be dismissed, arguing the information revealed would unfairly influence jurors because it did not provide the full picture of their client's version of event. They say that Blanco-Garcia asked to be taken to the hospital because he had severe PCP intoxication. He was hallucinating in the car and consequently thought Pham was going to harm his daughter when she made that wrong turn, the defense said.

The judge rejected the motion to dismiss the charges.

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