7-24-18-ERNIE ALLEN’S-TOP STORY-
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.
“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.
Bay Area Rapid Transit Police Chief Carlos Rojas said Monday that officers were scouring the area for John Cowell, 27, who is suspected in the Sunday night attack at the MacArthur Station in Oakland.
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.
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.
Surveillance footage showed 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, Rojas 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.”
