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'My Roommate Told Me He's Gonna Kill,' Slain American Admitted To Friend Days Before He Allegedly Killed Her
"After she told me that I thought he got mad at some people. I didn't feel like she was in any danger," Sarah Papenheim's friend Adam Pryor said.
An American student fatally stabbed in the Netherlands, allegedly by her roommate, told a friend days before dying that the suspect admitted to her that he wanted to kill people.
Minnesota native Sarah Papenheim, 21, was found dead inside an apartment in Rotterdam on Wednesday. Her roommate, 23-year-old Joel Schelling was arrested shortly after at a train station in Eindhoven, about 60 miles away from the apartment.
Adam Pryor, a friend of Papenheim's from back in Minnesota, told ABC News that she sent him concerning texts on Dec. 6, one of which read, "My roommate told me he's gonna kill 3 people. So I'm gonna have to go to the police.”
It’s not clear if she ever did.
Pryor said he didn’t think that Schelling was threatening Papenheim specifically.
"After she told me that I thought he got mad at some people. I didn't feel like she was in any danger," he told ABC News. "I never could've guessed it was her. Just the way she made it seem like, it was some other people he was mad at or something happened. I had trust in her. She was very responsible, that she would go to the police and take care of everything. I didn't ever think something like this was going to happen."
Papenheim was a psychology student at Erasmus University and a blues drummer who bonded with her roommate over the fact that they were both musicians.
Her mother said she tried to be a good friend to her roommate.
"She can't help everybody, but she thought she could," Donee Odegard told KARE 11 in Minneapolis "She just thought that she was at least there for him, and I don't know what he thought differently.”
The mother told KTSP in Minneapolis that “things seemed to be escalating” in the last few weeks.
Before that, she said, “My daughter, being so nice, would be, 'When he gets mad, I calm him down and he's fine.’”
Schelling appeared before a judge on Friday. He was ordered to remain behind bars for at least two weeks.
[Photo: Facebook]
