Man in California subway stabbing eligible for death penalty
UPDATE: 8/22/2018 12:51 p.m. Prosecutors have added charges that could qualify a man for the death penalty if he’s convicted of killing 18-year-old Nia Wilson at a train station in Northern California.
The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office added the special-circumstances enhancement of “lying in wait” to the charges against John Cowell. He didn’t enter a plea during the court hearing Wednesday.
Cowell is charged with murder in the fatal stabbing of Wilson last month as she changed trains at a subway station in Oakland. Cowell also is charged with attempted murder in the attack that wounded Wilson’s sister.
The defendant’s attorney, Brendon Woods, says he’s deeply concerned that prosecutors will seek the death penalty “for someone that has severe, severe mental illness.”
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7/25/2018 2:49 p.m. Prosecutors in Northern California say a paroled robber faces murder and attempted murder charges in the attack at a subway station against two sisters that left one of them dead.
They say 27-year-old John Cowell is set to be arraigned Wednesday in Oakland in the Sunday attack against 18-year-old Nia Wilson, of Oakland, and her 26-year-old sister, Letifah Wilson.
Alameda County prosecutors say he also faces parole violations charges.
Cowell was arrested Monday night on a Bay Area Rapid Transit train in the San Francisco Bay Area, about a dozen miles from the MacArthur station where the sisters were attacked.
His family says he has suffered from mental illness most of his life and failed to receive proper treatment.
Records show Cowell recently served two years for second-degree robbery.
UPDATE: 7/24/2018 9:52 a.m. The hunt for a man police say killed an 18-year-old woman in an unprovoked stabbing in the San Francisco Bay Area has ended where it began: In a train station.
Authorities arrested 27-year-old John Cowell on an Antioch-bound train Monday night at a Bay Area Rapid Transit station about a dozen miles from Oakland.
Police say Cowell killed Nia Wilson with a knife and wounded her sister at an Oakland station Sunday night.
It wasn’t immediately known if Cowell had a lawyer.
BART Police Chief Carlos Rojas says the motive for the attack is still being investigated. The victims were black and Cowell is white.
Police say vigil held at a BART station later swelled into a crowd of about a thousand that marched downtown.
UPDATE: 7/23/2018 4:19 p.m. The wounded sister of an 18-year-old woman fatally stabbed by a violent felon on parole says they were “blindsided by a maniac.”
Lahtifa Wilson, who is 26 years old, told ABC7 News on Monday that the sisters never saw suspect John Cowell or exchanged words with him on the subway before he stabbed Nia Wilson in the neck.
He then attacked and wounded her.
Wilson said she looked back at Cowell after he ran off, and she saw him wiping off his knife.
She said she failed to protect her baby sister, who she described as the “sweetest person on the earth.” She says she told Nia she loved her.
Wilson says she was with Nia and another sister and heading home from a family function when Cowell attacked at the MacArthur train station.
Bay Area Rapid Transit Police Chief Carlos Rojas said Monday that surveillance video shows 27-year-old Cowell striking the sisters and getting away.
A cousin had previously identified 21-year-old Tashiya Wilson as the wounded sister, but authorities later said Lahtifa Wilson had been hurt.
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7/23/2018 1:22 p.m. Authorities in Northern California say the man wanted in the fatal stabbing of a teenager at a subway station is a violent felon on parole.
Bay Area Rapid Transit Police Chief Carlos Rojas said Monday surveillance video shows 27-year-old John Cowell “struck very rapidly,” stabbing 18-year-old Nia Wilson to death and injuring her sister, Latifa Wilson.
Rojas says detectives found a knife at a construction site near the MacArthur train station they believe was used in the attack.
Rojas says surveillance video shows Cowell attacked the sisters quickly, stabbing them after they exited a train.
He says it was an “unprovoked, vicious attack” and that officials have not determined a motive.
Rojas says surveillance video also shows Cowell fleeing through a parking lot, where he changed his clothes.
UPDATE: 7/23/2018 12:46 p.m. Police in Northern California have identified a man suspected of fatally stabbing a teenager at a Northern California train station as 27-year-old John Cowell.
Bay Area Rapid Transit police on Monday released three surveillance video images of Cowell, including one that shows him at MacArthur station Sunday night, when the teenager and her sister were stabbed on a platform after exiting the train.
The photograph shows Cowell wearing a gray and white track suit and carrying a backpack.
BART Police Chief Carlos Rojas described Cowell as “a violent felon who is currently on parole.”
Police didn’t identify the victims, but their relatives say they were 18-year-old Nia Wilson, who died, and her sister, 21-year-old Tashiya Wilson. Tashiya Wilson was hospitalized.
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Authorities say a man fatally stabbed an 18-year-old woman in the neck and wounded her sister as they waited for a train in Oakland.
The stabbings, which appeared to be random, happened Sunday night at the Bay Area Rapid Transit’s MacArthur Station.
BART spokesman Jim Allison tells the San Francisco Chronicle one of the victims died soon after police arrived and the second victim was taken to a hospital.
He says police are looking for the suspect fled the station. He is described as a white male in his twenties or thirties with a heavy-set build.
Relative Malika Harris identified the woman who died as her sister, Nia Wilson, who had attended Oakland High.
Official closed the station after the attack. It reopened at 4 a.m. Monday.
