PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — Police in Port St. Lucie said Tuesday that a middle school teacher who was killed in a murder-suicide this past weekend was stabbed to death.
Investigators said Amanda Hicks, 26, was stabbed to death Saturday night by her fiancé at their home in the Peacock Run apartments located off Torino Parkway.
Investigators said the man then shot himself.
Police said the investigation so far has revealed that the man tried to call a family member just before midnight Friday. About an hour later, a single gunshot was heard on nearby video surveillance.
The man's family member tried calling back the next morning and then asked the police to do a welfare check. That's when the couple's bodies were found.
While police have not identified either person, the Martin County School District said Hicks was a reading teacher at Dr. David Anderson Middle School near Stuart since 2019.
The couple, who had recently moved to Port St. Lucie, had a 10-month-old child who police found in their crib after being called to the home.
The baby was not hurt and had been in the crib alone for about 11 hours after the killings, according to police.
The child is now in the custody of a family member.
Hicks' death is sending waves of grief through the tight-knit campus where she was a teacher.
"It is heart-wrenching," school media specialist Kelly Middleton said. "It is shocking to lose one of our family members."
Grief counselors were on hand Tuesday at Dr. David Anderson Middle School for staff and any students who wanted to come by.
"We wanted to share stories, and we wanted to share pictures," Dr. David Anderson Middle School Principal Darcia Borel said. "We wanted to be there for each other and share our love and grief process together."
Inside the school, when visitors turn a particular corner, they come face to face with an American flag mural created by Hicks.
"She is a gifted artist," Middleton said.
Middleton has seen dozens of teachers come through the district in her decades of work and could tell Hicks connected with her students.
"She was kind, very understanding," Middleton said. "She had a beautiful smile."
Hicks had been a reading teacher at Anderson since 2019.
"We had a beautiful baby shower for her last year before she left," Middleton recalled. "I was just looking at pictures of that."
Now there's talk of trying to preserve the flag mural so her memory will live on for years to come.