A man charged with killing a Reston couple in 2017 died this morning after being taken to a hospital from Fairfax County’s jail.
Nicholas Giampa, now 24, was found “unresponsive” in his cell at the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center around 1:58 a.m., prompting a deputy to announce “a medical emergency,” according to posts from the Fairfax County Police Department and Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office.
“Deputies immediately began performing life-saving measures,” the FCPD said in a news release. “Giampa was taken to the hospital in life-threatening condition and was pronounced deceased.”
An investigation into Giampa’s death is underway, but “preliminarily, foul play is not suspected,” the FCPD says. The sheriff’s office directed inquiries to the police department, stating that it doesn’t comment on open investigations.
Giampa, a Lorton resident, allegedly shot himself after killing his then-girlfriend’s mother, Buckley Kuhn-Fricker, and her husband Scott Fricker at their Reston home in the 2600 block of Black Fire Court on Dec. 22, 2017.
Giampa was taken to Reston Hospital and kept in a medically induced coma until early January 2018.
Giampa, who was 17 at the time of the shootings, and Kuhn-Fricker’s daughter, who was 16, had clashed with her mother and stepfather after they pushed her to leave him over white supremacist comments he made in social media posts, the Washington Post previously reported.
Giampa was indicted in 2019 on two charges each of first-degree murder and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony and expected to stand trial as an adult. He had been in custody at the county jail since Jan. 19, 2018.
A Fairfax County Circuit Court judge ruled in July 2022 that his social media posts couldn’t be presented as evidence to a jury. An appeals court also upheld a ruling in December 2022 that statements Giampa made to police while he was still hospitalized in January 2018 should be “suppressed,” since the interviews possibly violated his rights based on his “physical condition, his cognitive abilities, and the manner in which his rights were presented.”
An October 2023 trial got delayed after Giampa was found incompetent to stand trial, according to Fairfax County Public Defender Dawn Butorac, who represented him. Per court records, Giampa was scheduled to face a criminal trial by jury on Jan. 6, 2025.
Butorac says she’s “deeply saddened” by her client’s death and by “the fact that this tragic situation was entirely preventable.” Giampa never got support or “consistent or proper care” for mental health issues that he had throughout his life, including autism that wasn’t diagnosed until after the shooting, she told FFXnow.
Describing Giampa as “a young man with a dry sense of humor, an interest in anime and a person that would do anything for the people he loved,” Butorac says his social media posts didn’t reflect his “true beliefs or intentions,” and the emphasis placed on them by prosecutors and media reports obscured a “much more complicated and nuanced” situation.
“It is easier to put people in a box and label them than to truly understand what is going on with them,” Butorac said by email. “…Nick had a lot of struggles as a child and they contributed to his situation. I wish we would have been able to have a trial so the truth could have been revealed. It would have portrayed the real Nick and would have provided a greater understanding of how and why we ended up here.”
A spokesperson for the Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office didn’t respond to requests for comment.
