Chief: Suspect in fatal Oakland BART stabbing is a violent felon on parole

OAKLAND - The Latest on a fatal stabbing attack at a California train station (all times local):

1 p.m.

Authorities in the San Francisco Bay Area say the man wanted in the fatal stabbing of a teenager at a subway station is a violent felon on parole.

Bay Area Rapid Transit Police Chief Carlos Rojas said Monday surveillance video shows 27-year-old John Cowell "struck very rapidly," stabbing 18-year-old Nia Wilson to death and injuring her sister, Latifa Wilson.

Rojas says detectives found a knife at a construction site near the MacArthur train station they believe was used in the attack.

The chiefs says surveillance video shows Cowell attacked the sisters quickly, stabbing them after they exited a train.

He says it was an "unprovoked, vicious attack" and that officials have not determined a motive.

Rojas says surveillance video also shows Cowell fleeing through a parking lot, where he changed his clothes.

The chief says investigators are trying to determine what led to the attack. Rojas says they have no information it was racially motivated, but they are not discarding that factor as a possible motive. The Wilson sisters are black, and Cowell is white.

"Up to this point we don't have any information that was race-motivated, but we can't discard it.," he said.

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12:30 p.m.

Police in Northern California have identified a man suspected of fatally stabbing a teenager at a Northern California train station as 27-year-old John Cowell.

Bay Area Rapid Transit police on Monday released three surveillance video images of Cowell, including one that shows him at MacArthur station Sunday night, when the teenager and her sister were stabbed on a platform after exiting the train.

The photograph shows Cowell wearing a gray and white track suit and carrying a backpack.

BART Police Chief Carlos Rojas described Cowell as "a violent felon who is currently on parole."

Police didn't identify the victims, but their relatives say they were 18-year-old Nia Wilson, who died, and her sister, 21-year-old Tashiya Wilson. Tashiya Wilson was hospitalized.

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10:30 a.m.

A relative of a teen who was fatally stabbed at a Northern California train station says her cousin was returning home after celebrating her dead boyfriend's birthday when she was randomly attacked.

Ebony Monroe said Monday her cousins, 18-year-old Nia Wilson and 21-year-old Tashiya Wilson, were heading home Sunday night on a Bay Area Rapid Transit train after celebrating Wilson's late boyfriend's birthday. He drowned two years ago in a lake.

BART spokesman Jim Allison says a man allegedly attacked the sisters at random as they exited a train at the MacArthur station in Oakland.

Nia Wilson died soon after police arrived, and her sister was taken to a hospital.

Monroe says her cousin graduated from Oakland High School and was a "beautiful person inside and out."

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6:52 a.m.

Authorities say a man fatally stabbed an 18-year-old woman in the neck and wounded her sister as they waited for a train in Oakland.

The stabbings, which appeared to be random, happened Sunday night at the Bay Area Rapid Transit's MacArthur Station.

BART spokesman Jim Allison tells the San Francisco Chronicle one of the victims died soon after police arrived and the second victim was taken to a hospital.

He says police are looking for the suspect fled the station. He is described as a white male in his twenties or thirties with a heavy-set build.

Relative Malika Harris identified the woman who died as her sister, Nia Wilson, who had attended Oakland High.

Official closed the station after the attack. It reopened at 4 a.m. Monday.

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Information from: San Francisco Chronicle, http://www.sfgate.com