Ken & McKenna Evans fatally stabbed by Palmdale, California homeless man outside Kohl’s parking lot after argument turns deadly.
A California man and his 22-year-old daughter were stabbed to death by a homeless man while they were working on their car outside a Kohl’s last week, cops said.
Ken Evans, 54, and McKenna Evans were spending time together around noon Thursday while working on their sedan at a department parking lot in Palmdale, just north of Los Angeles, when the homeless man attacked them for no apparent reason, the LA Times reported.
Ken was rushed to a hospital, where he died, while his daughter was pronounced dead at the scene.
LA County sheriff’s deputies arrested a suspect, who they considered a transient. Details about the suspect, including the man’s name to date has not been released, save to say it is thought that both the assailant and the man’s victims appeared to be living in their vehicles, authorities stated.
Leading into the slaying, the suspect had asked Ken Evans for assistance regarding his vehicle, during which an argument ensued. The argument led to a physical fight and ultimately the stabbing of both victims. It remained unclear if the transient and his victims were known to each other prior to the blood-shed.
‘He walked away from it, came back and started stabbing her again.’
According to KTLA, Elizabeth Evans, the victims’ wife and mother, believes the suspect was on drugs and claimed that her husband tried to shield their daughter from the attacker while they were repeatedly stabbed. Investigators are yet to find the murder weapon.
Describing the bloodbath, a witness who wishes to stay anonymous told the Daily Mail, ‘He walked away from it, came back and started stabbing her again. Then walked away again. Came back. Kicked her, stabbed her two times in the abdomen, and walked away,’ she added. She also explained how he stabbed Ken, ‘He got stabbed a couple of times, and then he was trying to get back into his vehicle where he continued to stab him.”
‘She wasn’t just my daughter, she was my best friend,’ the mom said Sunday about McKenna. ‘She was just full of joy, and she cared for both people and animals.’
She told KTLA: ‘She was an absolute beacon … She didn’t know a stranger. Everybody became her best friend.’
Elizabeth said her husband was a ‘doting father’ who ‘loved spending as much time as he could with his daughter.’
Jesse Mercado, McKenna’s boyfriend, told KTLA that he ran to the scene after the stabbings.
‘I wanted to hold her again. It was hard to know that the person who changed my life so drastically — in just one day was taken,’ he told the outlet.
McKenna’s boyfriend left in grief and despair
He described McKenna as a kind, caring and ambitious young woman.
‘The first time I met her was at work,’ Jesse told KTLA. ‘The moment she presented herself was the day I fell in love with her.’
The two met at an ice cream shop where they both worked and had been dating since February.
McKenna, who had been waiting to take her aesthetician exam, preferred vegan products that were not tested on animals, her mom said, ‘because she paid attention to kindness and comfort.’
Elizabeth said her husband had been planning to move to Missouri and had been trying to spend more quality time with his youngest child before leaving.
‘That was Ken — a risk-taker, always adventurous,’ she told the LA Times.
The couple met in Kansas before returning to her native California, where Ken worked in construction and real estate, she said. It remained unclear if the father was gainfully employed at the time of the murders.
A GoFundMe campaign for the family has raised over $15,000 of its $20,000 goal.
The father and daughter’s deaths come as recent crime statistics show several major US cities, including Los Angeles, are on track to surpass last year’s already shocking rates of violent crime. Over the past year, the number of homicides in the city has spiked by 7%.
The numbers continue to ascend amid ongoing splintering of society, both ideologically, both from a woke, neoliberal mandate to that of a conservative nationalist stance along with an ever deepening and unprecedented divide between the haves and have nots in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic.
