MIAMI – A 23-year-old woman who was beaten and nearly stabbed to death on Valentine's Day by a roommate she found on Craigslist remains in the intensive care unit at Jackson Memorial Hospital. Meanwhile, Local 10 News reporter Michael Seiden spoke Monday to people who claim to have known her attacker.
Each person used the same word to describe Byron Mitchell, 35, who faces an attempted murder charge in the attack on Danielle Jones: creepy.
"He was kind of creepy at times," Stephen Newson said.
"I was like, 'Oh, my God. I knew he was a creep,'" another person, who did not want to be identified, said.
"He wasn't all there and the way he would look at you was a little -- a little creepy," Jorge Martinez said.
Newson, who said he is friends with Mitchell, described Mitchell as creepy and at times extremely weird, but never violent.
"We started talking a little bit and he was super excited because I was a black entrepreneur that owned a business," Newson said. "We just kind of hit it off from a business perspective. He would ask my advice."
Newson said the two had drinks together while Mitchell lived in Mississippi, and he said Mitchell would make odd comments to women he met at the bar.
"He would ask them weird questions and make sexual comments and ask them what they think about that," Newson said.
Two days before the attack on Jones inside her Overtown apartment, Newson got his friend an invite to a networking event on a yacht in Miami Beach, where Mitchell sipped champagne and talked to people about his supplement company.
"I'm a pretty good judge of character, but again, I just thought it was (his) personality type, but now after everything that happened..." Martinez said.
Local 10 News found no criminal history for Mitchell in South Florida or in Jackson County, Mississippi, where record show he is from.
The U.S. Air Force was able to confirm that Mitchell served in the Air Force Reserve from 2006 to 2014, when he transferred to the individual ready reserve.
Mitchell is accused of beating and stabbing Jones after he moved into her apartment a week earlier. Detectives said he attempted to cut off her lips and eyelids.
A motive for the attack remains unclear, but Mitchell is claiming self-defense.
"He's 6-foot-2, 160 pounds and it takes 300 stitches to put her back together," Jones' mother, Aimee Nikolov, said.
