Violent criminal released from jail due to COVID concerns murders elderly man in front of his 16-year-old daughter

On July 23, Montgomery County Police out of Montgomery, Maryland responded to a residence in Germantown after a 16 year old girl woke up to the sound of screaming in the house. The girl walked towards the stairs leading to the main floor and saw Justin Wilson, 26, fighting with her father, Edigio Ienzi, 63.

Wilson had with him a knife and her father was covered in blood. The girl quickly called 9/11 from her locked bedroom and hid in the closet. First responders quickly arrived at the home and called for medics to rush Ienzi to the Suburban Hospital in Bethesda where he later died of his injuries.

The perpetrator, Justin Wilson, had been released on April 30th, 2020 after filing an emergency petition with the court system for special release, ABC7 WJLA reports. The special release was issued after courts described an "immediate threat posed by [the] COVID-19 pandemic" on Wilson's well being.

Twitter Tweet

At the time of the release, Justin Wilson was an inmate at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility in Clarksburg, Maryland. He awaited trial on a 'rogue and vagabond' charge and various charges of theft.

On April 30 Judge Jordan, Associate Judge of the Montgomery County 6th Judicial Circuit, granted Wilson an unsecured personal bond of $5,000. These kind of bond requires no money to be put down by the defendant.

The following day, Ienzi's son watched surveillance video and quickly recognized Wilson, who is 250 pounds and stands 6'4" tall. The son had apparently told Wilson that his father loved to gamble and that he kept several safes in the home, leading to the apparent theft of a collection of the fathers silver coins.

According to 7 On Your Side, investigators wrote "the son stated that he was well acquainted with Wilson and that they were friends" and that "the two had met years prior."

"The hysteria of COVID-19 led jails and prisons across the nation, and the globe, to swiftly reduce their inmate populations out of fear that the respiratory virus would spread like wildfire," wrote ABC7's Kevin Lewis on Twitter. "Montgomery County, Maryland, was no exception."