Stabbing spree suspect, 36, is charged
Three were knifed — one fatally — on Saturday in neighborhood
Alameda County prosecutors filed charges including murder and a slew of other felonies Tuesday against a man accused of killing one person and wounding two others in a weekend stabbing spree in the Berkeley Hills.
Along with the murder charge, Jonah Jeremiah Roper, 36, faces two counts of attempted murder in attacks that cast fear into a wooded neighborhood just a few blocks from Tilden Park on Saturday.
Roper also faces charges of first-degree residential burglary and evading a police officer, along with numerous sentencing enhancements. Some enhancements are tied to former convictions for burglary, robbery and battery of a custodial officer.
He was being held without bail Wednesday afternoon at the Santa Rita Jail.
An arraignment scheduled for Wednesday morning was delayed until today after he refused to show up for court.
Authorities say the violence began midday Saturday when a man — later identified as Roper — broke down the front door of a home on Overlook Road and got into a confrontation with two people inside. One woman was stabbed to death at the home, police said, and another man was stabbed multiple times.
A child in the home saw everything and called police, according to court documents. Authorities said that the incident was initially described as a family disturbance and that it was not “random,” though they have not revealed the suspect's relationship to the residents of the house.
Court documents identified the woman killed as Maura Claire Ghizzoni.
While responding to the Overlook Road home, officers learned that Roper allegedly chased one of the stabbing victims to another house, this
time on Middlefield Road. There, Roper allegedly broke into the house and demanded keys to a vehicle there. In the process, he stabbed an elderly person multiple times, according to court documents.
Authorities suspect Roper then stole the vehicle and led officers on a 2-mile chase that ended with his arrest at Gilman and Ninth streets.
A neighbor, Mardi Sicular, later told reporters that Maura Ghizzoni was “a beautiful person, beloved, kind, generous … an angel of a neighbor.”
“We're all devastated,” Sicular said.
Sicular said she arrived home about 15 minutes after the attack, and her son told her he heard screams and people yelling “help, help, call 911!” Sicular wasn't sure if the scream her son initially heard came from their neighbor, but it was “a blood-curdling scream.”
At the time, Roper was free on his own recognizance after having been arrested in late August by Berkeley police on suspicion of showing up numerous times at the house of a different woman who had a restraining order against him.
He was formally charged Aug. 28, released a day later and ordered to appear in court Oct. 13 after having pleaded not guilty to the charges.