DETROIT – The neighbors who discovered the body of Samantha Woll on the sidewalk outside their Detroit home testified Wednesday during her murder trial.
Wednesday, June 12, 2024, is Day 2 of the murder trial for Michael Jackson-Bolanos, who’s accused of killing Woll at her home in Detroit’s Lafayette Park neighborhood on Oct. 21, 2023.
The first two witnesses to testify were Kevin Mull and Jessica Robinson, a married couple who live in the same townhome complex.
Mull said he got up around 6:20 a.m. Oct. 21, 2023, because the dog they were watching for a friend needed to go outside.
He took the dog out to the park area of the complex when he saw “an object” on the sidewalk.
He said he realized as he got closer that it was a person who wasn’t wearing clothing appropriate for the cold weather. He said the person had their back to him, but he could see they weren’t wearing shoes.
Mull said he called out to the person and heard no response. When he touched an exposed portion of skin on her back to see if she would react, she didn’t move, he said.
Mull said the body was cold and blue, so he went back inside and told Robinson, who called 911.
“He told me there is a person, potentially a body, lying on the sidewalk,” Robinson told the 911 dispatcher. “He attempted to nudge the person and they didn’t move, and there’s blood present.”
That 911 call was made at 6:24 a.m., and Robinson had not yet gone outside and seen the body for herself.
“It’s on my neighbor’s sidewalk,” Robinson told the dispatcher.
The dispatcher asked where the blood was, and Robinson called out to her husband to ask.
“On the sidewalk around the body,” she told the dispatcher, after he had replied.
Mull told the dispatcher that the person was “all curled up in a ball,” so he couldn’t tell much about them. He said he believed it was a younger woman.
The dispatcher asked if the person was breathing.
“It did not look like it,” Mull said. “She looked somewhat blue -- looked to be a little bit blue, like blue-ish skin color.”
At this point, Robinson and Mull went outside and approached the body. Robinson said based on the shirt and a hair clip, she believed the person was Woll.
“I recognized -- I thought -- that it was my neighbor, Sam Woll,” Robinson said.
Robinson said she knew Woll fairly well from talking to her at the complex.
“Good morning, hello?” Robinson called out to Woll, as heard on the recording of the 911 call. “There’s blood on the hands,” she then told the dispatcher.
Robinson said Woll was found at the intersection of the complex’s shared sidewalk and the sidewalk that leads to the units next to her unit.
Mull was asked by the dispatcher to perform CPR, but he refused.
“It was very clear to me that she was deceased,” he said.
You can watch their full testimony below.
