A Wisconsin man who allegedly murdered his wife and stayed in his house with their daughter for nearly a week afterward has died in jail.
Fuad Pashayev, 31, was found hanging in his cell in the Columbia County jail on May 5, the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office said in a press release.
Staff tried reviving him but failed and he was pronounced dead.
“Jail staff were able to cut the inmate down and perform life-saving measures as well as called an ambulance from Divine Savior Hospital; however, those life-saving measures were unsuccessful,” Columbia County Sheriff Roger Brandner said in a statement.
Pashayev was being held on $1 million bond for the suspected homicide of his wife, 23-year-old Tetiana “Tania” Huhzov, whose last name was spelled Huzhva in some reports, in early April at their home in the Wisconsin Dells. Officials said he admitted to the murder.
According to a criminal complaint obtained by the Portage Daily-Register, officers were called to perform a welfare check on the family’s house and entered the house, finding the body of Huhzov. She was covered up and “obviously deceased,” according to the complaint. Police found a large knife with blood smears in a bedroom and found “a large amount of blood” in a walkway downstairs.
Pashayev told officers that he had killed his wife and then stayed in the house with the body for several days before taking their 2-year-old daughter to a babysitter. He said he’d asked his wife to give him another chance but she informed him that she wanted to separate from him. She warned him that he would be going to jail, apparently a reference to domestic abuse charges he was facing, and that “if he did anything else,” she would call the police.
That’s when he said he took the knife and stabbed her in the side.
Columbia County Assistant District Attorney Maura O’Connell Melka told a judge during an April court appearance that the couple’s daughter likely witnessed the murder.
“This is a particularly egregious homicide, your honor. There was a very small child in the home,” Melka said in court, according to WMTV. “The household was clearly a murder scene, as laid out in the police report. The child could not have helped but seen disturbing things in the home.”
Huhzov had previously said her husband abused her and Pashayez was facing domestic abuse charges.
According to a criminal complaint filed on Jan. 4, Pashayev was charged with 11 counts of domestic abuse that allegedly took place between August 2018 and January 2019. Pashayev was ordered not to have any contact with his wife until that case worked its way through the courts.
Friends Work to Raise Money
After Huhzov, a Ukranian-born mother, was killed, her friends were working to raise money for her 2-year-old daughter.
Ana Ketchum, friend of Huhzov and her former manager at Goody Goody Gumdrop in Wisconsin Dells, started a GoFundMe for the family.
Ketchum told the Wisconsin Dells Events that Huhzov worked for her as a J1 international visa student but left in the summer of 2018 to spend more time with her daughter.
“She was so sweet, kind, and helpful. You never heard a no from her if you needed help with anything,” Ketchum said. “Always helpful, happy and always wanting to put a smile on people’s faces. Tania was an amazing friend, a sweet woman and an even greater mom to her 2-year-old daughter.”
Heidi Greenwood, who managed Huzhov at Applebee’s, said that she was a good person.
“She was a good listener, she spent a lot of time with her daughter,” Greenwood said. “She had a beautiful soul, she was just so beautiful outside and inside, and her daughter is so adorable. Her loss leaves such a large void.”
She said people suspected that there were issues at home between Huhzov and her husband.
“Everyone had an idea about the (domestic violence),” Greenwood said. “We were all so protective of her and her daughter. … Everyone that worked here tried to help her.”
