A man suspected of stabbing three homeless people in the Los Angeles area and allegedly leaving signed “death warrants” behind has been charged with attempted murder, the District Attorney’s Office said on Monday.
Courtney Anthony Robinson, 37, is set to be arraigned Tuesday in an LA courtroom.
He was charged with three counts of attempted murder with personal use of a knife and great bodily injury allegations, said Deputy District Attorney John Gilligan.
He was being held at the Los Angeles County jail. Prosecutors will ask his bail be set at $3 million.
Three homeless people, two men in their 50s and a woman in her 40s, were stabbed in the back while they were sleeping. The attacks occurred July 3 in downtown Los Angeles, July 17 in Santa Monica and July 19 in Hollywood. All three victims survived.
Robinson allegedly left type-written notes near his victims that were signed with the name David Ben Keyes, his alias, police said. He surrendered to police on Friday, after intense media coverage of the case, authorities said.
Police in Santa Barbara, meanwhile, consider Robinson, who has ties to that area, a "person of interest" in two additional non-fatal stabbings that occurred in that city on June 26 and July 1.
"They do not bear the hallmarks of the LA cases," said Santa Barbara Police Sgt. Riley Harwood, a department spokesman. "No notes were left at the scene. No knives left in the victims.
"But the timing with the LA incidents and his connection to Santa Barbara is causing us to look at him as a person of interest and perhaps even as a suspect in these cases."
Robinson has a Facebook page under his alias with his location listing him as living in Santa Barbara. His page features photographs of himself and a song appearing to have been recorded by him called "Only The Strong Will Survive," which talks about the recession, making news headlines and a life too hard to define.
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