https://www.instagram.com/p/Bllg6xYgaSn/?taken-by=lvanbliminse https://www.instagram.com/p/Bllg7udArZe/?taken-by=lvanbliminse https://www.instagram.com/p/BllgHAeA8wH/?tagged=johncowell https://www.instagram.com/p/BllgdGnnpxG/?tagged=johncowell https://www.instagram.com/p/BllZwcrF49v/?tagged=niawilson https://www.instagram.com/p/Bllgas_gJ-Y/?tagged=niawilson https://www.instagram.com/p/BllftMFDEAF/?tagged=niawilson UPDATE: It was confirmed on Monday night that 27-year-old John Lee Conwell was taken into police custody just after 6:45 p.m. #BREAKING: New mugshot of man accused of killing Nia Wilson at MacArthur #BART Station https://t.co/9xyse8QWQg pic.twitter.com/LG95Ee3EPz — KRON4 News (@kron4news) July 24, 2018 John Cowell has been identified as the suspect in the stabbing death of Nia Wilson. Wilson’s sister, Tashiya,, was also critically injured during an attack late Sunday night at the MacArthur BART station in Oakland. From the BART police: Investigators also recovered valuable evidence at the scene of the crime. All of that has helped BART Police to identify the suspect as 27-year-old John Lee Cowell. Cowell is Caucasian, stands 5’ 8”, and weighs 190 pounds. Cowell has short, dark hair as well as a closely cropped beard and mustache. Cowell should be considered dangerous and anyone who sees him should immediately call 9-1-1. Three photos of the 27-year-old suspect were also shared with the public as he remains at large. Cowell reportedly approached Wilson and her sister and slashed their throats with a knife. He was able to flee the scene Murder suspect identified in MacArthur stabbing. John Cowell is considered dangerous. Please call 911 if spotted. RIP Nia Wilson. We will bring this suspect to justice. Our thoughts are with the family and friends. Details: https://t.co/DEkTJvJnNe pic.twitter.com/igZU2bdel7 — SFBART (@SFBART) July 23, 2018 BART also shared details of the attack and the response from first responders. The BART Police Department is releasing images of the suspect wanted for fatally stabbing 18-year-old Nia Wilson and wounding her sister at MacArthur Station Sunday night. BART police officers were already at MacArthur Station when the incident occurred at approximately 9:36 pm and were flagged down about a male suspect on the platform with a knife. Officers arrived on the platform and found two women suffering from stab wounds. Officers immediately began rendering aid to the victims until paramedics arrived. Nia Wilson succumbed to her injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene. Her sister was taken to a nearby hospital. Our deepest condolences are with the Wilson family during this difficult time. Hopefully law enforcement will be able to locate Cowell and bring him to justice before he injures anyone else.<doc-sep>Ever since the news about a vicious stabbing attack that left Nia Wilson, 18, dead and her sister, Latifah, 21, also injured, people have been wondering if the attacks were hate crimes or racially motivated. Officials have named John Lee Cowell, a white man, as the suspect in the stabbings. Many tweets and posts on social media had announced that Cowell was a white supremacist, even before his name was released. Is this true? Here’s what we know so far. Authorities are currently saying that they have found no evidence that John Cowell is a white supremacist, associated with hate groups, or that his attack was racially motivated. However, they are still investigating and are not ruling out the possibility. There was no overt indication at the time that his horrific attack was racially motivated, according to witnesses and Latifah (sometimes spelled in some media sources as Letifah), Nia’s sister, who was also injured. She said that Nia stopped to help a woman with a stroller who was struggling to exit the train at the MacArthur station. At that moment, a man pulled out a knife and slashed her neck and stabbed her sister, CBS San Francisco reported. #BART stabbing victim remembering her sister and recalling their final moments together pic.twitter.com/uiyEEAKcF8 — Melanie Woodrow (@MelanieWoodrow) July 23, 2018 Latifah told ABC 7 that they never saw Cowell or exchanged any words with him before the stabbing. “All of a sudden we transfer, just to get blindsided by a maniac, for what I don’t know,” she 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.” Witnesses also said the attack seemed to come out of nowhere. Authorities say Cowell was on the same train as the two women and followed them off the train, where he is suspected of quickly attacking them on the platform. Then he ran. He was found the next day, early in the evening. BART Chief of Police Carlos Rojas said during a press conference on Monday that there was no evidence that the attack was racially motivated, but police weren’t ruling out the possibility either. A number of tweets right after the event happened made it appear that the suspect was a known white supremacist in the community. However, this did not end up being the case, at least as far as we know at this point in time. This is 18 y/o Nia Wilson. Tonight she was stabbed and killed in a random ambush attack by a suspected white supremacist male, who is still on the loose in Oakland Ca right now pic.twitter.com/fOKmS1lQfD — Tariq Nasheed (@tariqnasheed) July 23, 2018 In a press conference, Rojas said: “It looks like it was an unprovoked, unwarranted, vicious attack.” He described the attack as “prison style.” Rojas said that police have been searching for connections between Cowell and white supremacist groups, because the two women he attacked were black and Cowell is white, but they have not been able to find any connections. Cowell did, however, have an extensive and violent criminal record. Court records showed that in May 2016 he was convicted of felony second-degree robbery, SFGate reported. Cowell had just been released on parole in May 2018, KRON 4 reported, after fulfilling his complete prison sentence. The conviction was connected to a May 2016 incident where Cowell showed a box cutter and replica handgun during an interaction with a loss prevention officer at Lucky’s in El Cerrito, East Bay Times reported. A Kaiser hospital in Richmond had also obtained a restraining order against him in April 2016 because they said he repeatedly harassed and threatened staff members, including possibly threatening to kill a staff member. He was homeless and would sometimes show up at the emergency room and make threats, said Jason Curliano, an attorney who represents the hospital, to SFGate. According to East Bay Times, Cowell was harassing a woman at a Kaiser hopsital and began swearing at her. He told a coworker that “she better not be friends with” the woman or she would be “shot in the face also,” court records said. She said he threatened her life every time he came to the department. A different restraining order was also filed against him in 2015, possibly connected to entering a family’s home several times, without permission, while “high on drugs.” A search of court records also reveal a John Lee Cowell with 2016 bookings in Alameda County for misdemeanor infractions involving possession of a controlled substance, petty theft, and vandalism (malicious destruction of property.) In 2013, he was convicted of battery in Walnut Creek. A neighbor told East Bay Times that Cowell had once ordered food at Burger King, got angry at the clerk, and came back later and threw a brick through the window. She thought he would attack anyone he got angry at. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said the following in a statement about whether or not the attack was racially motivated: “As the Mayor of Oakland, it’s important I acknowledge that this horrific crime has a context. Although investigators currently have no evidence to conclude that this tragedy was racially motivated or that the suspect was affiliated with any hate groups, 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.” Rojas said that Cowell did not appear to be connected to any radical or white supremacist groups. But, “We are going to explore all options and all possibilities.” We will update this story as more information about the suspect’s motives are available.<doc-sep>At age 18, he beat up a man and sucker-punched the man’s daughter outside their Concord home. At 22, he battered a victim in Walnut Creek. Three years later, while robbing an El Cerrito grocery store, he threatened a security guard with a box cutter and a fake gun. Long before he was accused of stabbing 18-year-old Nia Wilson to death Sunday night at Oakland’s MacArthur BART Station, John Lee Cowell was trouble. He was in and out of jail and repeatedly harassed and threatened people, some of whom obtained restraining orders, court records show. But even as a picture emerged of the 27-year-old Cowell as he sat in Santa Rita Jail in Dublin on Tuesday, awaiting a decision on potential charges by Alameda County prosecutors, the motive in this week’s seemingly unprovoked stabbing of Wilson and her sister — who survived — remained elusive. Some shocked community members, including hundreds who took to the streets of Oakland Monday night, have questioned whether the attack was racially motivated, because Cowell is white and Wilson was black. But BART Police Chief Carlos Rojas said investigators have not found evidence — at least not yet — of a hate crime. And Cowell, who was described as transient, appears to have a history of mental illness, having once been evaluated for competence to stand trial and participate in the proceedings, according to court records. His family told KRON-TV in a statement that he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. One thing is certain: Those who have encountered Cowell in the past aren’t surprised he would do something terrible. “I wish he would get the death penalty for what he did to that poor little girl. She didn’t deserve it,” said 51-year-old Shane Glick, the man who was beaten up by Cowell and three other teens outside his Concord home nearly a decade ago. Cowell, who is expected to be arraigned Wednesday in an Oakland courtroom, was arrested roughly 21 hours after the attack on Wilson and her 26-year-old sister, Lahtifa Wilson. BART police said the suspect returned to the transit system Monday and was nabbed on an Antioch-bound train after being spotted by riders who alerted officers. BART police were already familiar with Cowell and had confronted him for fare evasion just four days before the stabbing, officials said. The killing has raised questions about safety on BART, which has seen violent crime go up 69 percent in the past decade. The slaying was the third possible homicide in recent days on the system. Before allegedly graduating to homicide, Cowell was known as a troubled kid in a gritty neighborhood in Concord. He and other teens would hang out at Hillcrest Community Park near Glick’s home, about a tenth of a mile from where Cowell lived with his family at the Adobe Mobile Lodge mobile-home park. Glick said that when he confronted the group in 2009 about his home being burglarized, they began their beating. When his daughter came outside while on the phone with police, Cowell sucker-punched her. He was charged with felony assault. At the mobile-home park on Tuesday, a resident named Ty, who would not give his last name, described Cowell’s violent behavior over the past 12 years, saying, “He just wasn’t in a normal state of mind.” “He would come and would just start disrespecting his dad,” who lived at the park for many years, Ty said. “His dad would try to keep it cool, and he would bring him in and let him stay the night and visit, but inevitably it would turn into something. It got physical.” In 2013, Cowell was convicted of battery for an attack in Walnut Creek. Two years later, he was arrested for being under the influence of methamphetamine and sentenced to 90 days in jail, records show. Cowell eventually became homeless. In 2015, an aunt filed for a restraining order against him in Contra Costa County Superior Court after he came into her home “under the influence of drugs and yelled and threatened me,” she wrote. The aunt and many of Cowell’s other relatives did not return phone calls Tuesday. One family member who declined to comment said he had not spoken to Cowell for 12 to 15 years. In April 2016, Cowell walked into the emergency room at Kaiser Hospital in Richmond and verbally accosted the receptionist, she said. “Where the f— is my backpack?” he was quoted as saying in an application for a restraining order filed by the woman. “How the f— do you not know where it is you crack headed bitch?” The woman said she was familiar with Cowell, who repeatedly “threatens my life.” A month later, Cowell stole several items from a Lucky store at 1000 El Cerrito Plaza, pulling a replica gun and a box cutter on a guard who tried to stop him. In that case, police reported arresting Cowell in a familiar place — on the platform of the El Cerrito BART Station. At one point, Cowell’s competency to participate in his own defense was questioned, but the case continued. He was sentenced to two years in prison and sent to state lockup in October 2016. He was released in early May, less than three months before the BART attack. Cowell’s family said he served part or all of his term in the state psychiatric hospital in Atascadero (San Luis Obispo County), was released directly from there and was “living on the streets without proper treatment.” “The system has failed in this instance,” the family told KRON-TV. “This is in no way an excuse for this senseless and vicious attack.” A resident of the Concord mobile-home park, 38-year-old Primitivo Alvarado, said Cowell had returned to his old ways after his prison stint. He said that after he spotted Cowell trying to break into his unit last month, he installed surveillance cameras, which showed Cowell attempting to gain entry again. “I opened my window (curtain) a little and it’s this guy in the window,” he said Tuesday, pointing to Cowell’s mugshot. “It’s scary to know this kind of person was trying to break in. That’s why I bought those cameras. I had nobody to protect my four daughters and my wife while I was at work.” Sarah Ravani and Evan Sernoffsky are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com, esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani @EvanSernoffsky<doc-sep>
The suspect in the fatal stabbing of a woman and the wounding of her sister at the MacArthur Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station on Sunday was arrested on a train to Antioch after being on the run for 21 hours. BART Police Chief Carlos Rojas told a news conference that an anonymous tip from a rider on a BART train led to the arrest of John Lee Cowell, 27, the Associated Press reported. Police intercepted the train at Pleasant Hill BART station and arrested the paroled felon, ABC 7 reported. Cowell had no weapon, and did not resist arrest, Rojas said. Police launched a manhunt on Sunday after 18-year-old Nia Wilson was stabbed to death and her sister, Latifa Wilson, 25, was wounded on a platform at MacArthur BART station. Nia Wilson died from her injuries at the scene, while Latifa Wilson remained in a critical condition in hospital Monday. Rojas said that surveillance camera footage showed that Cowell had been riding on the same train as the sisters, but they did not interact. As they got onto the platform, Cowell launched the attack, Rojas said. "It looks like it was an unprovoked, unwarranted, vicious attack," Rojas said, adding police did not have a motive for what he described as a "prison style" attack, in which Nia Wilson was stabbed in the neck twice. The sisters are black, and Cowell is white. Rojas said that police had not found any connections between Cowell and white supremacist groups. The East Bay Times reported that Cowell has an extensive criminal record. In 2016, Kaiser Medical in Richmond filed a restraining order against him after he was accused of threatening to kill an employee. He spent two years in prison after being sentenced for armed robbery and was released on parole four months ago. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, in a statement released after Cowell was caught, expressed condolences to the Wilson family and welcomed news of the arrest. "I am relieved to learn that the suspect was apprehended after an anonymous tip from a BART rider led to the arrest of the suspect. May this serve as the first step in bringing justice for the Wilson family, and healing to our community," she said. "As the Mayor of Oakland, it's important I acknowledge that this horrific crime has a context. Although investigators currently have no evidence to conclude that this tragedy was racially motivated or that the suspect was affiliated with any hate groups, 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."