SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. – The man accused of fatally stabbing his former roommate in a revenge plot over a stolen PlayStation was bloody and claiming self-defense when officers took him into custody, according to body camera footage released Tuesday.
The videos, which the 18th Judicial Circuit State Attorney's Office made public along with other records, show authorities tracking down Jake Bilotta to a nearby shopping center after the killing of 24-year-old Joshua Barnes.
Photos and video show that Bilotta, who ran barefoot from the home he shared with Ian McClurg and others in unincorporated Maitland, had blood on his feet and hands but otherwise appeared uninjured.
He told deputies, “(Barnes) was trying to kill me” and said he ran from the crime scene because he “didn’t know what to do.” He also said the unarmed victim tried to stab him and he grabbed the knife.
“I’m losing blood,” Bilotta told deputies about a cut on his wrist. Asked about any other injures, video shows that Bilotta said he was “so numb” he couldn’t be sure.
[WATCH BELOW: Body camera footage from Bilotta's arrest]
During his arrest, without deputies asking, Bilotta didn’t stop speaking and mumbling about the victim “trying to stab him with the knife.”
A photo from the crime scene showed a 9-inch kitchen knife covered in blood.
In an interview with deputies, McClurg said that Bilotta returned home from a trip to Boston on Nov. 26 and found that someone had broken in and stolen his PlayStation, a watch and a smoking device.
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McClurg said that someone sent a screenshot of a conversation between Barnes and another person in which Barnes admitted to taking the items.
“(Bilotta) was beyond pissed. Like, I’ve seen him pissed before but he was pissed to the point where he, like, punched a hole through his door and whatever else he did,” McClurg said.
Barnes had lived at the home for about two weeks but had been kicked out two weeks prior to his death because he wasn't paying rent and he'd left the door unlocked, deputies said.
McClurg said that throughout the day, Bilotta became more and more upset because he thought Barnes was telling people about the burglary and he worried that others would try to break in the home.
“Jake had pretty much been plotting to, I don’t know, get his (expletive) back at least. That’s all that I know. He wanted to have him over, didn’t want to have me leave,” McClurg said.
Eventually he devised a plan to get Barnes to the home to confront him about the stolen items.
“He told (Barnes) that they were going to go out, that there was an event, there’d be girls there. That eventually got (Barnes) to agree to come alone because he didn’t want to have a bad ratio, girl-to-guy,” McClurg said.
Bilotta mentioned possibly hitting Barnes with a katana, which is a traditional Japanese sword, and told McClurg to stay at the home in case things turned violent, according to a recording of the interview.
“Like, if (Barnes) comes over with a gun to, like, come around and like, help (Bilotta) because he’s going to be at the door ready in case he does pull a gun that was, like, pretty much it,” McClurg recalled.
Deputies said that when Barnes arrived at the home, Bilotta repeatedly stabbed him.
A roommate who had been on a Tinder date arrived home after the stabbing and saw Bilotta and McClurg trying to put Barnes' body in garbage bags, according to the report.
Bilotta at one point grabbed Barnes' arm, lifted it in the air then allowed it to fall back down and said he had to "give the (expletive) credit, he put up a good fight," documents show.
Bilotta will face the death penalty if he's convicted of first-degree murder. McClurg is charged with accessory after the fact to first-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence and criminal conspiracy to commit capital murder.