Suspect arrested in Oakland stabbing
We were ‘blindsided by a maniac,’ says injured sister
OAKLAND, Calif. — The wounded sister of an 18-year-old woman fatally stabbed in the neck while transferring trains said they were “blindsided by a maniac.”
Lahtifa Wilson, 26, said that she, her baby sister Nia and a third sister had been returning from a family outing when they were attacked by a man Sunday night.
“I looked back and he was wiping off his knife and stood at the stairs, and just looked. From then on, I was caring for my sister,” Wilson told ABC7 News on Monday, speaking outside a family member’s home with a bandage on her neck.
On Monday, authorities arrested John Cowell, 27, who is suspected in the attack at the MacArthur Station in Oakland, according to Bay Area Rapid Transit spokesman Chris Filippi.
Surveillance footage showed a man identified as Cowell fleeing the station through a parking lot and stripping off his clothes there. Detectives recovered a knife they believed was used in the attack at a nearby construction site, said Bay Area Rapid Transit Police Chief Carlos Rojas.
Surveillance video on the train and at the station’s platform showed Cowell had been riding the same car as the sisters, but they did not interact, Rojas said.
As the group got on the platform, Cowell quickly attacked them. “It looks like it was an unprovoked, unwarranted, vicious attack,” Rojas said.
Wilson said a woman with a stroller gave her a baby blanket to apply pressure to her sister’s neck, but Nia Wilson died calling out her sister’s name for help.
Wilson said she told her sister she loved her.
“We’re gonna get through this, I got you, you’re my baby sister,” she said.
The women’s father, Ansar Muhammad, said one of his daughters called him, crying hysterically, and told him to get to the MacArthur station.
“It’s nothing imaginable, seeing your child on the BART platform with a yellow tarp over her body,” Muhammad said Monday evening as he and other family members joined dozens of people for a vigil at the station. “That is an image I’ll never forget for the rest of my life. So I want justice. All I want is justice.”
Cowell was released from state prison on May 6 after completing a sentence for second-degree robbery, said Vicky Waters, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Rojas said that Cowell was cited for fare evasion on July 18 and his photo was captured by an officer’s body camera.
BART officials released that image and another one from surveillance video that shows him at MacArthur station Sunday night dressed in a white and gray sweatshirt and carrying a backpack.
In addition to serving time for a 2016 robbery in Contra Costa County, Cowell had prior arrests in Alameda County, as well as warrants out for his arrest, the East Bay Times reported.
Rojas said investigators were trying to determine what led to the attack. They have no information it was racially motivated, but they are not discarding that as a possible motive, he said.
Cowell is a white man, authorities said. The Wilson sisters are black.
Nia was “the baby” among six children, said her eldest sister, Unieve Wilson, 37.
She was “spunky, feisty, loved to dance,” she said. “She wouldn’t harm a fly.”