Neighbor Pleads Guilty to Murder, Sexual Assault of 11-Year-Old New Jersey Girl: Prosecutors

The upstairs neighbor arrested for sexually assaulting and fatally stabbing an 11-year-old New Jersey girl has pleaded guilty, prosecutors say.

Andreas Erazo, 20, of Keansburg, was arrested in July 2017 after Abbiegail Smith’s body was found partially clothed and wrapped in a comforter on a roof behind the building where she and Erazo lived.

Erazo on Tuesday pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and first-degree aggravated sexual assault, Monmouth County prosecutors said.

The state plans to recommend that he serve life in prison, subject to provisions that would require him to serve 63 years, nine months and three days before he would be eligible for supervised parole, according to prosecutors.

Abbiegail’s mother reported her missing on July 12, 2017, about an hour after she disappeared from their apartment on Hancock Street in Keansburg, prosecutors said.

Detectives found the girl’s body on the roof of a building behind her apartment complex the next morning. Sources at the time said her hands had been bound; an autopsy later found she had been sexually assaulted and stabbed to death. 

An investigation led police to Abbiegail’s upstairs neighbor, Erazo, who was charged with her murder. Prosecutors at the time said blood stains were found on his windowsill, and a knife was found in his apartment.

Erazo admitted to killing Abbiegail during a nine-hour interrogation, but he didn’t have a lawyer with him at the time, according to prosecutors. 

He is expected to be sentenced on May 31.