Aggravating new evidence has risen about the man arrested for stabbing a young Black woman at a BART Station in Oakland.
Court records demonstrate that John Lee Cowell, 27, has a dark and violent past, with various arrests for battery and harming innocent individuals.
At age 18, he was apparently arrested for thumping a man and sucker-punching his daughter outside their home in Concord, California. Cops tossed him in jail no less than five more circumstances after that — and supposedly faced him for fare-beating only four days before the BART cutting.
“He just wasn’t in a normal state of mind,” a former neighbor told the San Francisco Chronicle on Tuesday, citing repeated fights with his father. “He would come and would just start disrespecting his dad,” the neighbor 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.”
Cowell’s family asserts that he had a long history of psychological instability. They revealed to KRON4 that he experienced bipolar issue and schizophrenia.
As per court records, Cowell’s extensive criminal past traversed about 10 years and also included two restraining orders for violent threats.
In 2013, he was allegedly convicted of battery for an evident assault in Walnut Creek. Cops captured him two years after the fact for being affected by methamphetamine and condemned him to 90 days in prison.
In 2016, Cowell was captured for negligible burglary, illicit ownership of poisonous gas, ownership of a smoking gadget, and drug possession — yet the charges were later expelled following another capture and conviction for second-degree theft.
The burglary case originated from an episode at a neighborhood Lucky store, in which Cowell utilized a phony firearm and box shaper to undermine the life of a security monitor who apparently found him taking.
That exceptionally same year, Cowell was blamed for making murderous dangers to a doctor’s facility assistant.
“Where the f— is my backpack?” he told the woman, according to court documents. “How the f–k do you not know where it is you crack headed b**ch?” Addressing the Chronicle on Tuesday, the assistant guaranteed that Cowell over and again “threatened my life.”
As indicated by records, the 2009 beatdown in Concord happened directly down the road from the trailer stop where Cowell lived.
His neighbor, 51-year-old Shane Glick, complained about his home being burglarized and gone up against Cowell and a few different teenagers who were hanging out adjacent.
As Glick was conversing with them, Cowell began pulverizing him before, in the long run, socking his little girl after she came outside to survey the circumstance. Glick told the Chronicle that he wasn’t astounded by the way that Cowell purportedly graduated to manslaughter on Sunday.
“I wish he would get the death penalty for what he did to that poor little girl,” Glick said. “She didn’t deserve it.”
Cowell is accused of fatally wounding 18-year-old Nia Wilson on Sunday night at Oakland’s MacArthur BART Station. He additionally cut her 26-year-old sister, Letifah Wilson, however, she survived.
Cops got up to speed to Cowell on Monday after he came back to the travel framework and started riding an Antioch-bound prepare. Riders supposedly spotted him and alarmed experts.
The troubled ex-con was just released in May and was adjusting to his freedom. He was scheduled to served two years in state lockup — beginning in October 2016 — yet got discharged right on time for reasons unknown.
“The system has failed in this instance,” Cowell’s family told KRON4 in a statement. “This is in no way an excuse for this senseless and vicious attack.”
Sunday’s BART assault was the third murder covered the travel framework in under seven days. Straphangers were tense Tuesday as they made their morning and night drives.
“Maybe I should start driving to school, because I don’t think I feel safe as a BART commuter anymore,” tweeted one person.
“All this s–t happening at BART, I’m real life scared to ever take my son on it,” another commuter said. “You never know what’s [going to happen].”
