Girl found stabbed dead in nature preserve, Florida cops say. 16-year-old boy charged

A passerby found a teen girl’s body on a trail at a nature preserve, and Florida deputies believe she was meeting up with a 16-year-old boy now accused of stabbing her to death.

The boy, identified as Cameron Cubel, is being charged with first-degree murder, Hernando County Sheriff Al Nienhuis announced March 28.

The previous morning, a passerby at Cypress Lake Preserve reported finding the body of a teenage girl near a trailhead, and it appeared she had died of “homicidal violence,” deputies said in a news release.

Investigators learned the girl had snuck out of her house at about 1:30 a.m. to meet up with someone, and that person likely killed her and left her body until it was found about eight hours later, Nienhuis said.

Deputies conducted dozens of interviews trying to figure out who she had planned to meet, but when they spoke with Cubel, he initially denied having been there, according to the sheriff.

Eventually, investigators working with the State Attorney’s Office developed evidence to charge him, according to Nienhuis.

“I can tell you that likely the cause of death was from an edged weapon,” Nienhuis told news outlets. “Again, initial reports were we could tell pretty quickly that there was a lot of passion and a lot of violence involved in the particular death. So we were relatively confident it was not a random act.”

Authorities haven’t released the girl’s name or her age beyond disclosing she was a teenager who knew her accused killer.

Nienhuis said young people don’t always make the best decisions, but “they certainly don’t deserve to be murder victims.”

“We certainly are not blaming the victim,” the sheriff said. “She did not deserve what she got.”

Cypress Lake Preserve is about a 50-mile drive northeast from Tampa.

This story was originally published March 28, 2025 at 5:16 PM with the headline "Girl found stabbed dead in nature preserve, Florida cops say. 16-year-old boy charged."