UPDATE: Court documents reveal a fit of jealousy allegedly caused a 21-year-old to kill Dijah Ybarra

Warning: some graphic content

As the community is coming together to raise more than $10,000 for the family of Dijah Ybarra, a 21-year-old killed in a New Year’s Eve homicide, new details about what lead to her death are coming out.

According to court documents, the alleged killer, 21-year-old Neland Tavion Gray Jr., stabbed Ybarra 15 times after Ybarra talked to him about her new boyfriend.

The documents, written by Lincoln Police Sergeant Brian Agnew, detail the hours leading up to the 911 call that lead first responders to Ybarra’s body. 

Agnew said Ybarra called Gray Monday afternoon to ask if he could watch their two young sons so she could go to work and go out for the evening. Gray agreed, but later asked his aunt to babysit so he could go out as well. 

Around 7:00 p.m. Agnew said Ybarra picked up Gray and went to take their children to his aunt’s house. Ybarra went inside the home to drop the kids off and told the aunt Gray was waiting in the car. Agnew said Ybarra was going to drop Gray off at a friends house. 

But when she got to that friends house, Agnew said Gray told Ybarra her new boyfriend had disrespected him. That’s when Gray stabbed her multiple times and drove off in her car. The 911 call about a woman lying bloody in the driveway came just nine minutes after Ybarra dropped off her children.

Witnesses told police they heard a scream and saw a man flee in a dark colored vehicle. Another witness described the same vehicle and said they saw a man hitting a woman. They described the man as a 5’10 male slender in build.

Ybarra died at the hospital at 7:38 p.m. After she was identified investigators discovered Gray had previously been in jail for assaulting Ybarra. 

Agnew said investigators went to Gray’s mother’s home to look for him. She said she talked to him at 7:20 p.m. and he told her “I’m going to jail,” and he sounded stressed, according to the court documents. 

Gray’s mother told police he immediately called Ybarra because she was worried about their “toxic” relationship. She said Gray had been “messaging through social media insults about Ybarra’s new boyfriend,” Agnew said. 

Police eventually tracked Gray down. Agnew said Gray told police in an interview he took a purple steak knife with him when he went with Ybarra to “protect himself” from her new boyfriend and he got angry with her when she told him she didn’t love him anymore. He said he didn’t know how many times he stabbed her, but she was screaming for help. He told officers nobody else was involved and he took full responsibility for the injuries that killed Ybarra.

Gray appeared in court Wednesday on charges of first degree murder and use of a deadly weapon to commit a felony. If convicted he’ll facing life in prison.