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A Year Later: Why Nia Wilson’s Murder Is The Hate Crime That Still Haunts
It’s been a year since 18-year-old Nia Wilson, a young Black woman, along with her two sisters, innocently exited a train that pulled into a BART station, and fell into the range of a murderous White male, brandishing a huge knife, who briskly approached the trio and began his bloody massacre.
At the end of the horrific episode, older sister Letifah was left with a deep wound in her neck, Tashiya was lucky to be unharmed, and the youngest, Nia was bleeding out from a fatal slash to her throat.
27-year-old John Cowell, had managed to illegally jump over the turnstile, and storm the platform of the train station without issue, and this willful act gave him access to unsuspecting commuters, who were vulnerable to the murderous wiles of a seasoned criminal with a rap sheet, featuring previous charges of robbery, assault and drug possession.
Cowell was also sentenced to two years in a federal prison for a botched robbery at a clothing store located in a shopping plaza, and he was released on parole in May 2018, approximately two months before he killed Nia Wilson.
He was eventually apprehended by police at a different BART station, a day after the killing, and after the plea entry date was postponed multiple times, in May 2019, a judge finally set…
