Authorities in Northern California say the man arrested in the fatal stabbing of a teenager at a subway station is a violent felon on parole. In this photo released Monday, July 23, 2018, by Bay Area Rapid Transit is John Lee Cowell, a suspect wanted in the stabbings of two women at a BART station in Oakland, Calif. (Bay Area Rapid Transit via AP) In this photo released Monday, July 23, 2018, by Bay Area Rapid Transit is John Lee Cowell, a suspect wanted in the stabbings of two women at a BART station in Oakland, Calif. A man fatally stabbed an 18-year-old woman in the neck and wounded her sister as they exited a train at a Northern California subway station in what officials said Monday appeared to be a random attack. The suspect attacked the sisters Sunday night as they left a train at the Bay Area Rapid Transit's MacArthur Station in Oakland. He then fled, BART spokesman Jim Allison said. (Bay Area Rapid Transit via AP) In this surveillance camera image released Monday, July 23, 2018, by Bay Area Rapid Transit is John Lee Cowell, a suspect wanted in the stabbings of two women at a BART station in Oakland, Calif. A man fatally stabbed an 18-year-old woman in the neck and wounded her sister as they exited a train at a Northern California subway station in what officials said Monday appeared to be a random attack. The suspect attacked the sisters Sunday night as they left a train at the Bay Area Rapid Transit's MacArthur Station in Oakland. He then fled, BART spokesman Jim Allison said. (Bay Area Rapid Transit via AP) In this surveillance camera image released Monday, July 23, 2018, by Bay Area Rapid Transit is John Lee Cowell, a suspect wanted in the stabbings of two women at a BART station in Oakland, Calif. A man fatally stabbed an 18-year-old woman in the neck and wounded her sister as they exited a train at a Northern California subway station in what officials said Monday appeared to be a random attack. The suspect attacked the sisters Sunday night as they left a train at the Bay Area Rapid Transit's MacArthur Station in Oakland. He then fled, BART spokesman Jim Allison said. (Bay Area Rapid Transit via AP) In this Sunday, July 22, 2018, image provided by KTVU, Ansar Mohammed talks about the stabbings of his two daughters outside a Bay Area Rapid Transit station in Oakland, Calif. Authorities say a man fatally stabbed an 18-year-old woman in the neck and wounded her sister as they waited for a train in Oakland. BART spokesman Jim Allison tells the San Francisco Chronicle one of the victims died soon after police arrived and the second victim was taken to a hospital. (KTVU via AP) In this Sunday July 22, 2018, image provided by KTVU, A Bay Area Rapid Transit police vehicle is parked at the MacArthur BART station where authorities say a man fatally stabbed an 18-year-old woman in the neck and wounded her sister as they waited for a train in Oakland, Calif. BART spokesman Jim Allison tells the San Francisco Chronicle one of the victims died soon after police arrived and the second victim was taken to a hospital. (KTVU via AP) 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.” Ebony Monroe, a cousin of the victims, initially said the third sister, 21-year-old Tashiya Wilson, had been injured but authorities later said it was Lahtifa. Monroe was among several relatives who went to the train station Sunday night after hearing about the attack. She said the Wilson sisters were returning home after celebrating Nia’s late boyfriend’s birthday. He drowned in a lake two years ago, Monroe said. Monroe, 24, said her cousin attended Oakland High School and loved her family, dancing and makeup. “She was a beautiful person inside and out, and she didn’t deserve it,” Monroe said. A man who witnessed the attack told them the suspect came out of nowhere and slit Nia’s throat while she was sitting down in the train and that he stabbed her sister as she tried to stop him, she said. “She died for no reason,” Monroe said. “We want to see justice.” The killing was the third possible homicide on the BART line in just five days, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. A homeless man at the Bay Fair Station in San Leandro died Sunday at a hospital, a day after he was punched by an attacker and fell down and hit his head on the pavement. He was identified as Don Stevens, 47. Another man, Gerald Bisbee, 51, died Friday at his Pittsburg, California, home. Bisbee was attacked by a man who was quickly arrested and suffered a bloody lip and a small cut to the back of his knee. An autopsy Sunday determined that Bisbee died because the cut became infected, Rojas told the Chronicle. The three deaths appear to be unrelated but they represent a worrying “anomaly,” the police chief said. “It’s rare that we have a homicide, so of course this is ramped up to the highest priority when you have three deaths,” Rojas said.<doc-sep>PLEASANT HILL, Calif. -- Officials in Oakland announced Monday evening that the suspect in Sunday night's fatal stabbing that left one young woman dead and a second in the hospital was taken into custody at the Pleasant Hill train station, CBS San Francisco reports. The suspect, identified earlier Monday as 27-year-old John Lee Cowell, is a transient with a history of violence. Cowell allegedly pulled out a knife at the MacArthur BART station Sunday evening and slashed Nia Wilson across the neck before stabbing her sister, Latifa Wilson, and fleeing the scene. Nia's wound proved to be fatal and she died at the scene. Her sister was being treated at a local hospital. BART posted about the arrest on their official Twitter account: Murder suspect now in custody! BART Police took him into custody at Pleasant Hill BART. Full details to come and Chief availability at Rockridge BART at 8pm. Thank you BPD and thank riders for keeping your eye out!! https://t.co/OxZmOw2OkI — SFBART (@SFBART) July 24, 2018 According to a BART source, authorities received an anonymous citizen call saying the suspect was on an Antioch-bound train in the East Bay. Police stopped the train at Pleasant Hill station, where officers boarded and arrested Cowell without incident. BART officials thanked riders for help in the search for the suspect. Violence on Bay Area Rapid Transit has resulted in three homicides over the last week including the fatal stabbing of the 18-year-old woman Sunday night. BART Police Chief Carlos Rojas called the homicides 'an anomaly' at a press conference earlier Monday. "It's rare that we have a homicide so, of course, this is ramped up to the highest priority when you have three deaths," he said. "It doesn't matter that we have one person in custody on one — so that person's in custody and will be held accountable. We have pictures of the other two. These are all very serious crimes whether they happen on BART or right outside our station." Crime on BART trains and in the system's stations has been a hot button issue for nearly a year. BART Police says it has ramped up patrols and working video cameras have been placed throughout stations and on the cars. Rojas said officers were at the MacArthur Station at the time of Sunday's deadly attack. This undated Facebook photo shows Nia Wilson. Facebook Nia Wilson and her two sisters were traveling on BART Sunday night when they stopped to help a woman struggling with a stroller exit a train. It was at that moment that a man -- identified as John Lee Cowell, a transient with a history of violence -- pulled out a knife, slashed Nia across the neck and stabbed her sister, Latifa, before fleeing. Nia's wound proved to be fatal while her sister was being treated at a local hospital. "It was a very random attack that occurred at MacArthur," Rojas said. "We had officers at the station. In order for that to have been prevented, it would have been very difficult. You would have had to be standing right next to the individual. You can't have an officer on every square inch of a station." Station video cameras captured Cowell fleeing the station. He was also recorded in the parking garage getting rid of his clothing. He allegedly discarded the large knife outside the station where police found it. Authorities will be releasing additional details about the arrest later Monday evening.<doc-sep>
OAKLAND, Calif. — The hunt for a man police say killed an 18-year-old woman in an unprovoked knife attack in the San Francisco Bay Area ended where it began: In a train station. John Cowell, 27, a recently paroled robber with a violent history, was peacefully arrested on an Antioch-bound train Monday night about a dozen miles from the Oakland station where investigators believe he killed Nia Wilson and wounded her sister Sunday night. “This is the first step to achieving justice for Nia and her family,” Bay Area Rapid Transit Police Chief Carlos Rojas said at a news conference. A phone call from a BART rider led police to stop and search a Richmond-bound train at the MacArthur Station in Oakland but Cowell wasn’t aboard, Rojas said. “About 10 minutes later after we got the call, another patron told us the subject got on an Antioch-bound train,” Rojas said. A motive for the attack remained unclear. That train was stopped at the Pleasant Hill station in Walnut Park, northeast of Oakland. Cowell was on board and was arrested without incident. It wasn’t immediately known if Cowell had a lawyer. Asked how a wanted man could have gotten back into the BART system, Rojas said he didn’t immediately know but said the public transportation system is “porous” and large. Rojas said police officers were on duty at the MacArthur station where the attack took place but wasn’t sure it could have been prevented because of the suddenness of the unprovoked and possibly random attack. In a “prison-style attack,” Cowell stabbed Nia Wilson twice in the neck and then attacked her sister before fleeing and apparently doffing his pants and sweatshirt to evade capture, Rojas said. The knife believed to have been used in the attack was found at a nearby construction site. Letifah Wilson, 26, said that she, Nia and a third sister had been returning from a family outing when they were “blindsided by a maniac.” “He didn’t know us, we didn’t know him,” Wilson said. “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,” she told ABC7 News on Monday, speaking outside a family member’s home with a bandage on her neck. 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. “That is an image I’ll never forget for the rest of my life. So I want justice. All I want is justice.” Surveillance video on the train and at the station’s platform showed Cowell had been riding the same car as the sisters Sunday, but they did not interact, Rojas said. A motive for the attack remained unclear. Rojas said Cowell hasn’t been connected to any radical or white supremacist groups, although he added: “We are going to explore all options and all possibilities.” The victims were black and Cowell is white. Monday night, Oakland City Councilmember Lynette McElhaney said she had spoken to the district attorney and was told that Cowell will be arraigned Wednesday and the office hasn’t ruled out charging him with a hate crime. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf issued a statement acknowledging that there currently was no evidence that the attack was racially motivated but “the fact that his victims were both young African American women stirs deep pain and palpable fear in all of us who acknowledge the reality that our country still suffers from a tragic and deeply racist history.” A Monday night vigil held at the MacArthur BART station later swelled into a crowd of about a thousand that marched downtown, police said. Marchers demonstrated about perceived abuses and neglect of the city’s large African-American community. Police said some people in the crowd became “disruptive” when two men were detained because of a dispute, and some firecrackers were thrown but police broke it up and the two men were later released. Cowell has a reported history of drug use, homelessness and violence. He was released from state prison on May 6 after completing a two-year sentence for second-degree robbery, said Vicky Waters, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Cowell pulled a knife and a replica gun on a supermarket clerk who confronted him over stealing, court records show.