Largo man accused of fatally stabbing woman, granddaughter faces trial

Prosecutors presented gruesome new details Wednesday in the case of a Largo man accused of breaking into a home and stabbing a woman and her granddaughter to death in 2021.

During opening statements, prosecutors said Sage Curry, now 22, snuck into the home through an unlocked window and killed Zhaneta Dindi, 78, and her granddaughter, Hera Dindi, 17.

Curry’s lawyers don’t plan to refute that he killed them.

Instead, they will argue he was insane when he entered their home and slayed them. Records show that if Curry is found not guilty by reason of insanity, it will be up to Pinellas Circuit Judge Keith Meyer whether he will be involuntarily committed to a hospital, given outpatient treatment or released.

Curry is charged with two counts of first-degree murder and one count of armed burglary. If found guilty of first-degree murder, Curry faces either life in prison with no possibility for parole, or under certain conditions, the death penalty.

Curry’s lawyers did not give opening statements. Instead, they deferred, meaning they may give openings later — after the state rests its case, but before it begins to present evidence.

Assistant state attorney Paul Bolan pushed back against a forthcoming insanity defense, saying Curry’s behavior that night was driven by alcohol and marijuana abuse, not mental health issues.

“I want to take you back three years,” he told the jury. “Almost to the day.”

Hera Dindi was visiting her grandmother at her home on April 25, 2021. The two went for a walk together on the Pinellas Trail. While they were walking and catching up, they noticed a man, later identified as Curry.

Later that night, while talking on the phone with her boyfriend, Jai Isaac, Hera mentioned the “creepy” man she saw on her walk, prosecutors say. She told Isaac that she heard noises outside her window, but he told her not to worry.

Hera and Isaac stayed on the call while they fell asleep, prosecutors said. At about 1 a.m., Hera texted him, “Baby, I think someone’s in the house. Please wake up,” according to text messages shown in court.

“By then it was too late,” Bolan said.

Prosecutors said Curry entered the house through an unlocked back window, taking multiple knives from the kitchen and placing them around the home.

Before stabbing Zhaneta Dindi multiple times in the heart while she slept nearby on the couch, Curry smoked cigarettes inside the house, prosecutors said.

Hera came out of her room while Curry and her grandmother were struggling. The two fought, and Curry stabbed Hera a number of times, prosecutors said. She managed to stab him on the hand and the back of his head.

An autopsy showed Hera was stabbed repeatedly in the throat, Bolan said.

Shortly after his arrest, Curry told Largo police he entered the home through a window and attacked the two women “with the sharpest kitchen knife he could find” — a butcher knife, according to an arrest report.

A neighbor called 911 after Curry showed up to a nearby home, bleeding from the head and banging on the man’s door.

Curry then told police a woman two doors down had stabbed him. He was taken to a hospital for treatment. Officers approached the house and spotted the bodies of the two women through a back window.

Prosecutors argued that bloody sock prints leading out of the home, knives with Curry and Hera’s DNA on them and Curry’s blood found on the victims would be enough to prove him guilty. Bolan also began to cast doubt on the defense’s argument that he was insane.

“The evidence will show the defendant knew what he was doing and knew it was wrong when he was doing it,” he said.

Bolan warned jurors that Curry’s lawyers would attribute his actions to “hallucinations” and “delusions,” but that this wasn’t consistent with his behavior.

“His (delusions) change every time you talk to him,” Bolan said.

While in the hospital, Curry gave investigators a conflicting and often confusing account of the incident, at one time telling police the girl had stabbed her grandmother before he admitted to slaying her.

He first told authorities he had been stabbed by “Allison Hargraves,” or “Ali,” which investigators suggested may be a reference to a character from “The Umbrella Academy,” a comedy on Netflix. Curry told police that Ali and “Granny Smith” had invited him back to their home for a cigarette before Ali stabbed him.

A friend of Curry’s said he saw Curry the day before the attack and heard him “talking insanity,” imagining himself having sexual relations with characters on television, including one named Alison Hargreaves, according to court records.

In another version, Curry said he followed Hera and Zhaneta from the Pinellas Trail to their home, just five houses from the trail. He said he had entered the Largo home through a window “to find something to eat.”

He admitted to stabbing both of the women, records state.

At the mention of 17-year-old Hera being stabbed repeatedly in the throat, members of her family sitting in the gallery became upset. Some left the courtroom sobbing. Others teared up or covered their faces.

Irma Dindi, Zhaneta’s daughter and Hera’s aunt, took the stand first. She told jurors she lived with her mother at their Largo home. Hera visited them every weekend.

When asked if she knew Curry, Irma said no.

“He’s never been to my house,” she said. “Never ever.”

Family members present in court declined to speak with the Tampa Bay Times. Curry’s side of the courtroom sat empty.

Curry appeared in court Wednesday wearing a lavender shirt and patterned tie, with what appeared to be a crescent shape tattooed prominently on his forehead.

Prosecutors said Curry gave himself the tattoo in jail as an homage to Moon Knight, the protagonist in a Disney+ show who grapples with dissociative identity disorder.

Curry told a state expert he thought the tattoo would help his case, prosecutors said.