LOS ANGELES — A homeless man who authorities suspect stabbed three Los Angeles-area transients while they slept and left behind rambling “death warrants” is believed also to be responsible for two other knife attacks in Santa Barbara, police said Saturday.
LOS ANGELES — A homeless man who authorities suspect stabbed three Los Angeles-area transients while they slept and left behind rambling “death warrants” is believed also to be responsible for two other knife attacks in Santa Barbara, police said Saturday.
Courtney Anthony Robinson, 38, called 911 on Friday evening and surrendered to police about 8:40 p.m. at a Hong Kong Express eatery in the center of Hollywood, said Los Angeles Police Department Cmdr. Andrew Smith. Robinson was “lucid” and was taken into custody without incident, Smith said.
Sgt. Riley L. Harwood, a spokesman for the Santa Barbara Police Department, confirmed that Robinson was being investigated as “a person of interest” in connection with the non-fatal stabbings of two homeless men in separate incidents on June 26 and July 1.
No “death warrant” or knives were left at the scene of these crimes, Harwood said. He declined to say whether the victims were asleep when they were attacked.
In the LAPD’s jurisdiction, Robinson is suspected in the July 3 attack on a 56-year-old man in downtown Los Angeles and the stabbing Thursday of a 54-year-old homeless woman as she slept on a street in Hollywood. Police also believe Robinson stabbed a man on July 17 as he slept on a bus bench along the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica.
In all three attacks the knife was left in the victim’s body, but none of the stabbings was fatal, police said. Investigators believe Robinson is responsible for the attacks in LAPD’s jurisdiction “based on the interrogation and evidence recovered at the scene from the suspect’s property,” police said.
Smith declined to discuss the “death warrants.”
