Slain woman's father erupts in court
Jun. 29—HIGH POINT — The father of a slain High Point University student was removed from a Tennessee courtroom as he unleashed a curse-filled tirade toward the man who is charged in the death.
Ricardo Delgado, the father of 19-year-old Gianna Rose Delgado, was in Elizabethton, Tennessee, to attend the extradition hearing for Michael Louis Cadogan, 24, who is accused of killing Gianna Delgado in High Point and intending to dispose of her body in Tennessee. WCYB-TV reported that family members of both Delgado and Cadogan were in court Monday morning.
WJHL-TV reported that Ricardo Delgado stood at the end of the hearing and began yelling at Cadogan. Video shows Delgado continuing to yell as officers guided him out of the courtroom and into the hallway.
Delgado has told Tennessee reporters that he wants Cadogan to get the death penalty.
Attorneys for Cadogan didn't contest his extradition to High Point from Carter County, where Cadogan was captured a week ago with Gianna Delgado's body in a tote inside the car he was driving.
The High Point Police Department says Delgado was killed in a north High Point apartment early in the afternoon of June 21 in an apparent domestic dispute.
Law enforcement officials in Tennessee say Cadogan contacted a woman in Kingsport, Tennessee, he had met online, told her he had strangled his girlfriend in a dispute over another man and asked her to help him dispose of the body and the car. Cadogan then drove to Tennessee thinking the woman would assist him, but she was cooperating with law enforcement.
Carter County deputies stopped and arrested Cadogan. He is being held without bond.
Cadogan will be charged in High Point with first-degree murder and felony concealment of death, according to police.
High Point Police Department Lt. Matt Truitt said either state or local officials will travel to Tennessee to pick up Cadogan.
"The first step is seeing if the N.C. Department of Public Safety is going to pick him up. Their timeline is between 10 and 30 days," Truitt told The High Point Enterprise. "If the Department of Public Safety is not going, we will go as soon as we can get it scheduled, probably within two weeks."
Police officers and volunteers will go door to door to distribute flyers Tuesday morning in the apartment complex where investigators say the homicide took place on Pallas Way in the Palladium area. Police say no other suspects are being sought in Delgado's killing.
"We want to bring awareness that this was a domestic-related homicide," Truitt told The Enterprise. "Any time we have a homicide, we will always do a flyer response."
Representatives of the Guilford County Family Justice Center, which serves women and children in domestic violence situations, are scheduled to take part in the flyer response, Truitt said.
Cadogan doesn't have a criminal record in High Point, Truitt said. His only encounter with law enforcement came about through a traffic accident.
pjohnson@hpenews.com — 336-888-3528 — @HPEpaul
pjohnson@hpenews.com — 336-888-3528 — @HPEpaul
