OAKLAND, Calif. — A paroled convict suspected in a deadly stabbing at an Oakland train station has been arrested.
Authorities say an anonymous tip from a Bay Area Rapid Transit rider led them to 27-year-old John Lee Cowell.
He was arrested aboard an Antioch-bound train Monday night at the Pleasant Hill Station in Walnut Creek, about a dozen miles from Oakland.
A manhunt had been underway since Cowell was identified as the suspect who randomly and fatally stabbed 18-year-old Nia Wilson in the neck and wounded her sister Sunday night at the MacArthur BART station in Oakland.
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.
Authorities say Cowell had served time for second-degree robbery and was released from prison on May 6.
Nia’s parents and dozens of others held a vigil at the station Monday night to remember her.
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.
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