Ramy Fahim admitted Tuesday, April 7, to two counts of murder with special-circumstances enhancements for lying in wait and committing a murder to avoid arrest, according to Orange County Superior Court records.
That still leaves the sanity phase of his trial, which will determine whether Fahim — who previously pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity — faces up to life in prison without parole or being sent to a state hospital for treatment.
Fahim worked at the office of a wealth-management firm in Newport Beach with one of the victims, Griffin Robert Cuomo, 23. The other victim — Jonathan Andrew Bahm, also 23 — had no prior connection to Fahim, police previously said.
Cuomo and Bahm were roommates who graduated from Chapman University less than a year before the stabbings April 19, 2022.
Cuomo was a marketing and media assistant at Pence Wealth Management, where Fahim also worked. Those who knew him during his time at Chapman’s School of Communications remembered Cuomo as a thoughtful and appreciative student with an uplifting personality who offered frequent words of encouragement in online classes during the pandemic.
Bahm, a computer-science major during his time at Chapman, was a member of the Cybersmart Panthers GCI team, a student-led group that combated hacking, phishing and other cybercrimes. He also worked as an intern for game-design studios.
Fahim’s motive for the killing was not clear.
But a lawsuit filed by Cuomo’s mother, against the wealth-management business, alleged that Fahim suffered from a lifelong mental illness that caused him “serious difficulty in refraining from violent conduct” and led him to turn his anger on Cuomo and other co-workers.
The lawsuit alleged that Fahim was given the “green light” to “harass, intimidate and threaten” employees at Pence Wealth Management because his mother, who was serving at the time as a minister with the Egyptian government, was friends with the firm’s leaders.
Jury selection for the sanity phase of Fahim’s trial is underway at the Santa Ana courthouse.