SAN ANTONIO – A San Antonio school teacher and his wife told of a gruesome end to a New Year’s Eve visit to a Northwest side park in 2013 as they testified Friday during the murder trial of Christian Bautista.
Edward and Sierra Wagner said they and their young son had just visited the children’s playground at O.P. Schnabel Park late in the afternoon that day and were walking along a jogging trail as they returned to their car.
“I was kind of in shock when I saw it because it didn’t seem real,” Edward Wagner testified.
What he saw was the body of Lauren Bump, 24. The graduate student had been jogging in the park when Bautista is accused of attacking her with a knife.
“She was just lying on the floor face down,” Wagner said. “I could actually see some blood, a lot of blood.”
During opening statements in the trial on Tuesday prosecutor Mary Green told the jury that Bump “had been stabbed at least 20 times.”
The first paramedic on the scene that evening testified Thursday that “almost every ounce of blood” had drained from Bump’s body into the ground.
Wagner’s wife testified that while her husband called 911, she examined Bump’s body.
“I couldn’t feel a pulse so I looked at her back to see if she was breathing and that’s when I noticed that her body was mutilated,” she said.
Just 45 minutes before finding Bump’s body the couple testified that they had come upon a man in the park that Wagner described as “strange looking.” He said that his wife jokingly said that he “looked like a serial rapist.”
In a photo lineup three days later and in court on Thursday, the couple identified Bautista as the man they saw in the park.
If he is convicted of Bump’s murder Bautista is facing a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Testimony will continue on Friday in Judge Jefferson Moore’s 186th District Court.