Suspect Arrested in Third Killing in Bay Area Transit System in a Week

Authorities in California said Monday night that they had captured a man suspected of fatally stabbing a young woman and wounding her sister at an Oakland transit station over the weekend, the latest of three unrelated homicides at Bay Area transit stations in less than a week.

The Bay Area Rapid Transit Police Department identified the stabbing suspect as 27-year-old John Lee Cowell, a parolee who was released from prison about four months ago.

Around 6:30 p.m. local time, the police took him into custody at the Pleasant Hill BART station, about 15 miles northeast of where the stabbing took place, said Chief Carlos Rojas of the BART Police Department. He said riders had identified Cowell, whose picture had been widely distributed. The suspect was unarmed when he was arrested.

Rojas said Cowell “has a violent past” and is “a dangerous individual,” though he would not detail Cowell’s criminal history. Available court records show that Cowell has committed criminal and traffic-related offenses, but they do not detail the nature of the crimes.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that he was convicted of felony second-degree robbery charges in 2016, and convicted of battery in 2013.

While some on social media and at a vigil on Monday speculated that the crime was motivated by race, Rojas said that the reason for the attack was still unclear.

“While we don’t have any facts that suggest he’s connected with any white supremacist group, we are going to explore all options,” he said at a news conference Monday night. Cowell is white; the woman he is accused of killing was black.

It was not immediately clear whether Cowell had a lawyer.

The police said Nia Wilson, 18, and her sister, Lahtifa Wilson, 26, boarded a BART train at Concord Station on Sunday night. Cowell also boarded there, and all three got off at MacArthur Station, about 3 miles north of downtown Oakland. The attack occurred on the platform there, Rojas said. BART police officers arrived at the scene just after 9:30 p.m. and found the sisters suffering from stab wounds, and Cowell fled from the station, he said.

Nia Wilson was pronounced dead at the scene, police said; her sister, Lahtifa, was taken to a hospital and was in stable condition as of Monday afternoon, said Alicia Trost, a BART spokeswoman.

“It was, in my close to 30 years of police experience, probably one of the most vicious attacks that I’ve seen,” Rojas said at a news conference earlier Monday.

In a statement released Monday, Mayor Libby Schaaf called the stabbing “senseless” and “horrific.”

The transit police said the stabbing came just a day after a 47-year-old man, Don Stevens, was punched in the head by a suspect at the Bay Fair Station and fell on the platform, hitting the cement. He was taken to a hospital, where he died, the police said. The police have not made an arrest in the case.

Separately, a 50-year-old man was assaulted at the Pleasant Hill Station on July 18, police said. The man, Gerald Bisbee, died from an infection that resulted from a small cut to his knee. The suspect in the case, Abdul Bey, 20, is in custody, the authorities said.

“One week we can carry 2 million people and be extremely safe, but what happens in our community bleeds into our system and we have to deal with that too,” Trost, the BART spokeswoman, said.

Speaking about the fatal stabbing, she acknowledged, “People are saying, ‘Why weren’t there officers there?'”

“There were two officers at that station, but it happened so quick,” she said. “It all took 20 seconds.”

After a vigil for Nia Wilson on Monday, local television footage and social media posts showed what appeared to be a few hundred people marching in downtown Oakland. Some residents told reporters that they were unsettled by what they saw as a double standard in the way the authorities treat white suspects compared with black ones.

“We arrest people based on probable cause,” Rojas said, when asked about the issue. “We don’t just go out there and kill people that have committed crimes. It’s our job to go ahead and bring them to justice.”

At an earlier news conference Monday, Daryle Allums, Nia Wilson’s godfather, urged the community to remain calm and wait for more information about the case to emerge.

“They didn’t ask to get cut or stabbed,” he said of the sisters. “Those are baby girls. Those are our children.”

“Our family needs prayer,” he added. “We need support.”