Police: Defendant in Teen Murder Trial Confessed to Attack

The teenage defendant charged with a Rose Hill murder told police he attacked the victim, Patch has learned from a search warrant application.

Wyatt Campbell, 18, died on October 14 from blood loss caused by stab wounds inflicted earlier that night. A 15-year-old male Rose Hill boy was charged with murder in Campbell's death.

It is Patch policy not to name minors accused of crimes.

The day after Campbell died, the defendant told police he and his older brother had targeted Campbell the night he died, according to a police application to search the defendant's home.

"The [defendant and his brother] admitted targeting the victim and assaulting him at Rose Hill Shopping Center on October 14, 2010," reads the search warrant affidavit, written by Fairfax County Police Department Detective Christopher Flanagan on October 15.

The affidavit does not say the defendant or his brother confessed to murdering Campbell, however.

Flanagan writes that the defendants also described a pocket knife with a black handle, although it is not clear whether police believed this knife was used to stab Campbell. According to another police affidavit, the weapon used to stab Campbell was never recovered.

According to the affidavit, the two brothers also told police that they used a replica pellet pistol gun in the attack. A broken pistol replica was found at the scene of Campbell's stabbing, behind Rose Hill Shopping Center.

This is consistent with , who said in December that the two brothers had a pellet gun when he and Campbell met them behind the shopping center.

Although the search warrant application was approved, Patch was not able to locate any document describing the results of the search of the defendant's home.

Police also searched a 2004 Mazda the brothers were believed to have fled the scene in.

Investigators took 40 swabs of a fluid in the car's interior they suspected to be blood. DNA results in March found that the blood did not come from the defendant, but that it could have come from Campbell.

Police also found a cell phone, pieces of broken glass, a multi-tool, and an X-Box 360 lanyard with a plastic card attached that said "Call of Duty" in the car.

The defendant's trial, originally scheduled for April 11, is now planned to take place on July 5.