Police arrest suspect in Sunday’s BART fatal stabbing
OAKLAND >> BART police announced Monday evening that a man suspected of stabbing two sisters on a BART platform, leaving one dead, has been arrested. The suspect was nabbed at the Pleasant Hill BART station, police said.
The stabbing marked the second homicide on the BART system in two days and the third death in five days. The cluster of unrelated attacks marks one of the most violent stretches for the transit agency in recent history.
At a hastily called press conference Monday, BART Police Chief Carlos Rojas told reporters at Rockridge BART: “We’ve taken John Lee Cowell into custody at the Pleasant Hill BART station.”
Rojas said BART police had gotten a phone call from a rider who said they believed the murder suspect was on a Richmondbound train heading for the Coliseum station.
“That train was stopped at MacArthur station and we searched the train but did not find the individual,” said Rojas.
“About 10 minutes later after we got the call, another patron told us the subject got on an Antioch-bound train,” he said. “So we intercepted the Antioch-bound train at Pleasant Hill.” Cowell was found on that train.
“It was a very uneventful contact,” said Rojas. “They asked him what his name was. He was truthful with officers in terms of his name. They asked him for identification and he provided California ID.”
Law enforcement officers had searched Monday for Cowell, 27, a Concord transient with a long criminal history. Killed was
18-year-old Nia Wilson, of Oakland. Her sister, Latifa Wilson, suffered critical injuries.
“(It’s) probably one of the most vicious attacks I’ve ever seen,” said Rojas.
The sisters boarded at the Concord station, as did Cowell, authorities said, and all three exited at the MacArthur transfer station to wait for a Warm Springs train around 9:30 p.m. The slashing came quick and without warning.
Latifa Wilson, still wearing a gauze on her neck, told ABC7 news Monday afternoon she and her sister were “blindsided by a maniac” they never spoke with on the BART train. The older sister said the man stabbed Nia Wilson first, then her, and ran away while wiping off a knife.
“She’s just yelling my name, ‘Tifah, Tifah, Tifah’, and I said, ‘I got you baby, I got you,’ ” Wilson told ABC7. “I’m her protector and I feel like I didn’t protect her.”
Officers were flagged down within minutes, but Nia Wilson died on the platform.
Chief Rojas said the suspect ran out of the North Oakland station, and surveillance footage showed him pulling clothing out of a backpack to change his outfit. Rojas said the quickness of the “prisonyard” style assault allowed the suspect to elude police. The suspected murder weapon, a knife, was found in a nearby construction site, the chief said. A source said a backpack left behind at the station led authorities to identify the suspect as Cowell.
“We had where he doffed his clothes in the parking structure,” said Rojas. “We had a knife that was located. We had video that had to be recovered in different locations. We had to track down and make sure that this was the correct individual.”
Rojas noted that police haven’t connected Cowell to any radical or white supremacist group, but “we are going to explore all options and all possibilities.”
At a Monday evening vigil at MacArthur BART in Oakland, family and friends of Wilson described the Oakland High School graduate as a smart teenager who did not like to take BART because “she was scared of it.”
Her mother, Alicia Grayson, said Wilson took CPR classes and once saved her aunt’s life using the Heimlich maneuver.
“Everybody loved her,” Grayson said. “My baby didn’t get in no trouble. They can’t even find her with her fingerprints right now because she was never in no trouble. She didn’t deserve this. She was just coming back with her sister.”
Daryle Allums, the teenager’s godfather, said he will remember Wilson’s “beautiful face” most. He called for a “healing circle” and held up a flier with Cowell’s face on it before a crowd that swelled to about 200 people at its largest.
A grief-stricken Grayson, who sat in a chair mostly quiet during the vigil, spoke up when a reporter asked if she had a message for John Cowell.
“(Expletive) John,” she said. “Excuse my language, I don’t care, I’m mad. That’s my baby, what am I supposed to say? He took my baby, man. He took my baby. My baby was laying out on the platform. What am I supposed to say? I don’t know what to say. My baby’s gone.”
Court records and interviews with a neighbor paint Cowell as a drug-using, quick-tempered man with a trail of restraining orders and criminal charges.
Shooting into a dwelling, felony assaults, using weapons including knives and burglary are all allegations he’s faced, a law enforcement source said.
He recently had finished a two-year prison sentence for a conviction of a 2016 second-degree robbery case, his most serious crime to date at the time.
He also scared acquaintances in the past. A 2015 restraining order alleged he tried to enter his family’s Concord home several times without permission while “high on drugs.” In 2016, Kaiser Permanente Richmond Medical Center filed a restraining order against him for allegedly calling a worker a “crackheaded (expletive)” and constantly threatening to kill her. The threats were serious enough that frightened hospital employees asked that the restraining order request be expedited, writing they were afraid Cowell would carry out his threats if an order wasn’t issued right away
Carol Kincaid, a neighbor who said she has known Cowell since he was in diapers, described him as “always in trouble.” His behavior has worried neighbors in the Concord neighborhood for years, especially since he recently returned to his aunt’s house across the street, Kincaid said.
The neighbor said Cowell asked her for a ride to BART about a month ago and that she and her husband reluctantly agreed. Cowell acted odd the entire trip, she said.
“I think he would absolutely kill somebody if he had something against someone,” Kincaid said. “He’s no good at all.”
BART police searched for another homicide suspect who punched a man at the Bay Fair station in San Leandro early Saturday. The victim, 47-year-old Don Stevens, fell to the ground, hit his head and was declared brain dead on Sunday at Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley, authorities said. In a third instance, police are investigating the death of a man assaulted at the Pleasant Hill station on Wednesday. Police have arrested 20-year-old Abdul Bey on suspicion of battery.