A grand jury has indicted a Florida man accused of “senselessly and brutally” raping and murdering a young teen, charging him with first-degree murder and rape, State Attorney Andrew Bain announced August 28.
Jerry Dorisme was indicted last week on charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping with intent to inflict bodily harm or terrorize, sexual battery and attempted sexual battery, Bain said in a release.
Thirteen-year-old Rose Dieujuste was walking from her home in a Orlando-area apartment complex to her friend’s home on July 4 to hang out, when she was allegedly kidnapped by Dorisme.
“Her friend found Rose’s cell phone and shoes in the staircase in that apartment building and reached out to Rose’s family,” Orange County Sheriff John Mina said at a July 12 press conference.
The friend told Rose’s older sibling, Jean Renal Dieujuste, that “she saw her [shoes] and her phone on the stairs but she was not there,” the brother wrote in a GoFundMe.
The victim’s sibling said they was frightened, and they and others knocked on doors and checked the building until they made a terrifying discovery: Rose clinging to her life in a utility closet with a “big hole” in her chest where she’d been stabbed.
Deputies who responded to frantic 911 calls found Rose in the closet “partially naked,” Mina said, adding that she was “barely alive.” Rose was rushed to a local hospital where she died from her injuries.
“She should not have died this way,” Mina said. “My heart aches for her family and her friends and her loved ones. What we can do now is provide justice for this family moving forward.”
A witness at the complex reported seeing a male leaving the building where Rose was found, he said.
Video at the complex allegedly showed a man “following at a distance behind Rose as she walked through the complex to her friend’s building,” Mina said. That man, they believe, is Dorisme.
At the scene, detectives found the packaging for a 12-inch kitchen knife, which they believe to be the murder weapon. They also later found a video of allegedly showing Dorisme “buying that same kitchen knife” from a nearby store moments before the slaying “that was used in the murder.”
Dorisme was arrested on July 11, and on August 6 his public defender filed a motion of incompetency, WFTV 9 reports. His trial is scheduled to begin on December 2.
This wasn’t Dorisme’s first run-in with the law. In 2021, he was arrested on a charge of lewd and lascivious behavior on a child, Mina said. That charged was reduced to child abuse with Dorisme pleading no contest. He was sentenced to a year and a day in prison.
Orange County deputies encountered him as recently as June, after receiving calls about a man walking down the street with a knife, Mina also claimed. When confronted by police, Dorisme allegedly punched the arresting officers, who ultimately enforced the Baker Act, which places people believed to suffer from mental illness in a mental health treatment facility for up to 72 hours.
“Rose’s murder shook our community and our agency,” Mina said. “Any time a child is murdered, we all collectively grieve. I’m a father. Our detectives are all parents, and this is very, very hard on them, and of course, the community. And we can’t even imagine the pain and anguish that Rose’s family and loved ones are going through right now.”
