Fairfax County police stopped investigating the murder of Anh-Tuan Tran, 24, after suspect Noel Dabney, 27, died at Loudoun Hospital Center last Friday.
"It's over. One victim is dead, one is recovering and the suspect is dead," said Mary Ann Jennings, director of public information with the Fairfax Police Department.
But Loudoun detectives are currently investigating the cause of Dabney's death, said Kraig Troxell, public information officer with Loudoun County Sheriff's Office. "Detectives will basically hand over findings to the medical examiner and the medical examiner will determine if an autopsy is necessary in this case," he said.
"It appears to be a suicide," Troxell said.
DABNEY, 27, was charged on Sept. 4 with stabbing and murdering Tran, a graduate computer science student at George Mason University, at Tran's residence on the 3000 block of Mission Square Drive in Fairfax.
According to Fairfax police, at approximately 3:15 a.m. on Sept. 4, Dabney "confronted Tran and a woman and stabbed them both. Dabney fled from the house."
Officers arrived at 3:16 a.m. to find Tran's body and a woman who had also been stabbed.
"[The woman] was screaming and was visibly upset and was also suffering from stab wounds to the upper body," according to Fairfax Circuit Court records. When an officer asked who had stabbed her and Tran, she identified Dabney, according to the same reports.
The woman, whom police did not identify, was taken to Inova Fairfax Hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
POLICE INTERVIEWED two additional witnesses at the house who both identified Dabney.
Dabney, of Glenhazel Drive in Ashburn, was arrested at Loudoun Hospital Center, where he was being treated for injuries.
Dabney's mother, Kim Tran Dabney, told Fairfax police that a woman called to tell her on Sept. 4 that her son was injured and was in Annandale, according to court documents.
Dabney's mother told police that she drove him to the Loudoun County Hospital, according to court reports. She would not tell police the name of the woman who called her nor the location that she found her son, according to court documents.
Loudoun sheriff deputies arrested and guarded Dabney after he arrived at the hospital.
Fairfax police stated that he was being treated for non-life threatening injuries in press releases. Dabney died the next morning on Friday, Sept. 5. Loudoun Hospital Center cannot release any information about a patient, according to its spokesperson Tony Raker.
George Mason University made counselors available to students following the murder, according to Jeremy Lasich, GMU public relations.