South Bay crime spree: San Jose man charged in deadly rampage

SAN JOSE — The man arrested and blamed for a lengthy stabbing and carjacking rampage last week that left three people dead and seven more injured across San Jose and Milpitas in what authorities believe was a streak of aimless violence has been charged with murder and a dozen other crimes.

Kevin Parkourana, 31, of San Jose, was charged Tuesday by the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office, according to Superior Court records. Prosecutors filed 13 felonies against him, led by three murder counts and including seven attempted murder counts, two carjacking counts, and one count of assault with a deadly weapon.

Parkourana was scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday afternoon in a San Jose courtroom, but the hearing was postponed to Thursday after the defendant refused to go to court from the Main Jail where is being held without bail. Even so, District Attorney Jeff Rosen addressed the alleged crime spree outside the Hall of Justice where the arraignment was set to be held.

"He will spend the rest of his life in prison and he will die there," Rosen said Tuesday.

Rosen also confirmed investigators’ stance that there was no connection between Parkourana and the victims, no pattern for how he selected targets, and no clear motive.

"We may never know the answer or answers to those questions," he said. "It was multiple repeated acts of violence with a knife, with a car, against people targeted randomly."

Also Tuesday, the county Medical Examiner-Coroner's Office formally released the identities of the three people who died allegedly at the hands of Parkourana: Nguyen Pham, 72, and Phuc Pham, 71, both of San Jose; and Jiwanjot Dhariwal, a 26-year-old Milpitas resident. The Phams had been identified to the Bay Area News Group earlier by relatives.

Court records show Parkourana has a history of mental health holds and criminal behavior and felonies — including bomb-making and threatening a man with a dagger — and was out of jail on active probation. Reports surfaced the day after the attacks about Parkourana being arrested in January in San Jose for an alleged hate crime attack on his transgender roommate, which did not lead to criminal charges.

Without naming a specific case, Rosen said his office did its due diligence in evaluating Parkourana's criminal past and whether there were opportunities to intervene before Thursday's bloodshed. He said there were none.

"What I can say there is nothing that we could have done that would have prevented this, and any other different decisions that we would have made would have still resulted in the defendant being out of custody at the time of these charges," Rosen said.

According to a newly released investigative summary by San Jose and Milpitas police, the alleged crime spree began just after 3 p.m. June 2 on Kooser Road and Dellwood Way, near the Parkouranas’ family home in San Jose. Parkourana allegedly carjacked a tan Honda minivan and stabbed its male driver, who was rushed to the hospital with life-threatening injuries.

About 20 minutes later, Parkourana then allegedly stole a burgundy Honda Pilot in a shopping mall parking lot on Hillsdale Avenue, stabbing and seriously wounding the male driver. He was then spotted at Union and Curtner avenues, where witnesses say he rear-ended a motorcyclist, knocking him into the roadway.

That motorcyclist, 67-year-old San Jose resident Wynton Waldorf, showed up to court Tuesday hoping to watch Parkourana's scheduled arraignment. Outside the courthouse, he recalled being stopped at a traffic light when his motorcycle was hit and he was sent flying over his handlebars.

"I wanted a chance to look him in the eye," Waldorf said of his court visit before reflecting on the totality of the alleged crime spree: "I’m so lucky that I wasn't one of the people that got killed."

After Waldorf was hit, police say, Parkourana drove to the area of the Pruneyard Shopping Center near the Campbell-San Jose border and drove toward a woman pushing a shopping cart, hit the cart and then took off. Police say he then headed to downtown San Jose, where around 4 p.m., he rear-ended a motorist near 10th and East Santa Clara streets, then got out and stabbed that driver.

About 10 minutes later, Parkourana was reportedly seen near 16th Street and drove into the Phams, who were fatally injured, as well as another person who survived, in a violent collision partially captured on surveillance video.

Parkourana subsequently hit someone riding a motorized scooter while heading north toward Alum Rock in San Jose, police said. He made his way to Milpitas, where police say he entered the Smart & Final on Jacklin Road and stabbed Dhariwal, who later died at the hospital.

Around 6:15 p.m., about three hours after the violent stretch began, Parkourana was swarmed by police and arrested on Arizona Avenue near the site of the final stabbing. Along the path of destruction that authorities have charged him with, police say they recovered a kitchen knife in the first carjacked vehicle, which matched a missing slot in a knife block at his family home.

Over the weekend, friends and relatives of the Phams gathered near where they died and put together a makeshift memorial while remembering the couple, former restaurateurs, as a welcoming and friendly presence in their neighborhood. Tuesday, relatives of Dhariwal weren't ready to talk about him publicly.

"It's too fresh," said one family member Tuesday.

Staff writers Julia Prodis Sulek and Austin Turner contributed to this report.

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