Witnesses: Bullying may have sparked deadly bus stop stabbing

Students react to stabbing death

Students recall stabbing, tension on school bus

Jorge Saavedra

RAW VIDEO: Students exit bus after stabbing

Student are reunited with parents at Palmetto ...

Friends and classmates of the 16-year-old Palmetto Ridge High School student who was stabbed to death Monday afternoon after getting off the school bus, and the 14-year-old student accused of killing him, said the stabbing was the result of ongoing bullying.

Niambi Gutierrez, 16, who lives two doors down from the stabbing victim, Dylan Nuno, a sophomore at Palmetto Ridge, called Nuno "one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet." She doesn’t know the accused killer, Jorge Saavedra, very well, but said he had been getting picked on for awhile.

"He seemed to try to brush it off anytime it did happen," Gutierrez said.

Nuno was "kind of hyped" when he got on the bus Monday, but Gutierrez said she didn’t know exactly why. She said he called Saavedra a name, which angered him and prompted the fight.

"People were pushing it to happen and it just happened, and they got off the bus," Gutierrez said.

"I don’t feel it’s completely his fault," Gutierrez said of Saavedra. "He did do it. I feel like he was pushed to his limits and there’s only so much a person can take."

Gutierrez said the bullying was not physical, and wasn’t especially intense. "But it was over and over, and it was more than just once that it happened."

Nuno and Saavedra got off the bus in the 1100 block of 47th Avenue Northeast, which appears to be before they should have gotten off. Saavedra lives near the intersection of 47th Avenue Northeast and 20th Street Northeast.

Witnesses told Collier County sheriff’s deputies that Nuno punched Saavedra, and it appeared as if Saavedra was punching Nuno in the abdomen, according to an arrest report. Nuno backed away, and had blood on his shirt.

Saavedra then fled into the woods. When deputies found him, his clothes were covered in blood.

Gutierrez and her younger sister, Jazmin Gutierrez, 14, described Nuno as an energetic young man who enjoyed wrestling, jiu-jitsu, bowling, football, skate boarding, skim boarding, in-line skating, and riding BMX bikes and 4-wheelers. He attended Lely High School last year, started this year at Palmetto Ridge, before transferring to Lely and then back again to Palmetto Ridge.

"He was good at everything he did," Jazmin Gutierrez said.

When reached in his driveway Monday afternoon, Nuno’s father, Renier Nuno, said his son "didn’t have any police record."

"He was just a kid," he said.

A woman who answered the phone number listed on Saavedra’s booking report identified herself as his sister, and described her brother as "a good kid" who liked to hang out with friends and go to basketball games. She said he had a lot of friends, declining further comment.

Caridad Valdes, 21, who lives next door to Saavedra, also had positive things to say about him.

"He’s a quiet kid. The family is a good family. They’re just real quiet," Valdes said. "He had friends that came over once in a while. Never any issues. They had some fire pits in the back."

But Valdes had also heard that Saavedra was being picked on.

"I know he was having issues in school," she said. "He was missing school. He was scared to go to school because some kids were bullying him."

Saavedra is the third Collier child 14 and under arrested on homicide charges in the last six months.

Jonathan Rowles, 13, was charged with manslaughter after authorities say he shot his mother in the head, killing her in their Fiddler’s Creek condo in August. Alex Crain, 14, was charged with two counts of second-degree murder in the shooting deaths of his mother and father in their Golden Gate Estates home in December.