Suspect in CA knife attack on 2 sisters captured; 1 killed

(RNN) – The man suspected of killing an 18-year-old girl and injuring her sister in a stabbing attack at a San Francisco Bay Area train station is in police custody.

Nia Wilson, 18, was murdered at a BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station in Oakland on Sunday night, and her 26-year-old sister, Lahtifa, was taken to the hospital. Lahtifa was reported as being in stable condition Monday afternoon.

The BART Police Department announced Monday evening that they had arrested the suspect, John Cowell, a 27-year-old white man, saying that an anonymous tip from a BART rider led them to find Cowell on a train.

Police believe Cowell had followed the sisters off a train and attacked them on the platform. A witness who spoke to the San Francisco Chronicle said he saw one of them bleeding from the neck.

Authorities said Cowell indicated his guilt by changing clothes after the attack, which was caught on surveillance footage.

The girls’ father, Ansar Mohammed, told KTVU, “I want justice for my daughter.”

“I get here, I see all the police and ambulance and I run up the platform and I see my youngest daughter laying up there under a tarp, dead,” he said. “I work at Highland Hospital, I see this every single day, but I never imagined myself going through nothing like this. That’s my baby girl laying up there.”

A cousin, Ebony Monroe, told the Chronicle that Wilson was a “beautiful, sweet person” who “didn’t deserve this.”

Police have not yet attributed a motive to the attack. 

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