Less than 24 hours after a family day out turned to tragedy, a California woman has spoken about her sister’s senseless death.
With her neck still bandaged from where her alleged attacker stabbed her, Lahtifa Wilson revealed how she pleaded with her sister to hold on after she too was stabbed in the neck at an Oakland BART Station on Sunday night.
“I’m her protector and I feel like I didn’t protect her,” she told ABC 7 News. “She’s just yelling my name, ‘Tifah, Tifah, Tifah,’ and I said, ‘I got you, baby, I got you.’”
Lahtifa reassured her sister, Nia, telling her they would survive this, “We’re gonna get through this, I got you, you’re my baby sister.”
Despite Lahtifa’s pleas, her 18-year-old little sister died from her wounds on the MacArthur platform, according to a press release from the BART Police Department.
Late Monday, their alleged attacker, John Lee Cowell, was arrested after BART police released images of him from surveillance footage and police bodycam footage, according to a second press release from the police department.
Before the stabbing, Lahtifa told the outlet she and her sister had never met Cowell and were “blindsided” by the attack.
“All of a sudden we transfer just to get blindsided by a maniac, for what I don’t know,” she said.
Cowell, 27, was found via an anonymous tip from another BART rider. He was aboard another train bound for Antioch at the Pleasant Hill Station.
Cowell is on parole and was released from prison four months ago, BART Police Chief Carlos Rojas told reporters Monday night.
Cowell was previously convicted of felony second-degree robbery, according to SFGate. He was also previously convicted of battery in June 2013.
