The white male suspect alleged to have fatally stabbed 18-year-old Nia Wilson at the MacArthur BART Station in Oakland Sunday night has been arrested following an anonymous tip.
Nia Wilson and her sister, 26-year-old Lahtifa Wilson, were both stabbed in the neck in an unprovoked attack while waiting to transfer to another train on their way home from a family gathering. "For what? I don't know why," Lahtifa, who was hospitalized overnight Sunday, told the San Francisco Chronicle. "And I looked back, and he was wiping off his knife and stood at the stairs and just looked—and from there on, I was just caring for my sister. I was in shock. ... I didn't know I was cut because I was paying more attention to my sister. But he just stood there, like it was nothing."
Per a BART Police Department news release, officers were already at the station when the attack occurred at approximately 9:36 p.m. Sunday night. After being notified of a "male suspect on the platform with a knife," officers came across the scene of the murder and started rendering aid to the victims. Nia Wilson ultimately died on the platform.
BART authorities received an anonymous tip Monday night informing that the suspect, 27-year-old John Lee Cowell, had been spotted on another BART train. A train bound for Antioch was eventually intercepted at Pleasant Hill, at which point Cowell was arrested. Cowell has a violent history, including convictions of felony second-degree robbery and battery. He had also been hit with multiple restraining orders, including one obtained by a hospital in Richmond who told authorities in 2016 that Cowell had threatened workers "with physical harm."
Though authorities haven't named a motive in the murder of Nia Wilson, many have pointed to the fact that Cowell was white and the victims were black.
As noted by the Chronicle, a GoFundMe has now been set up by Nia Wilson's family seeking to raise $9,000. At the time of this article's publication, more than $21,000 had been donated.
