A homeless woman in San Jose was killed on Monday night by a disturbed man wielding a samurai sword.
The suspect allegedly stepped off a bus at around 6:30pm carrying the weapon. He went over to the victim, a homeless woman who regularly spent time in front of the Walgreens on San Carlos Street, and slashed her multiple times in the throat with the sword.
Witnesses report that the violent incident was likely sparked earlier that day when a man who matched the description of the suspect was sitting in an area Starbucks and then suddenly freaked out.
"He threw the table of the gentleman next to him, dropped his drink, dropped the next person's drink, flew out of the store screaming 'Nooo, don't do that to me!' It scared everybody in the entire store," barista Ruth White told ABC News.
He returned to the coffee shop and said that the victim had been looking at him from the street. "And we said, 'What happened? Are you OK?' " she explained. "And he said, 'She was trying to put a black voodoo spell on me and I didn't want her to,' and he was literally scared to death."
The victim was pronounced dead at the scene.
San Jose police have since determined the identity of the suspect and took him into custody later that evening without incident.
At present, authorities aren't releasing the name of either the suspect or the victim. However, the latter was a notable presence in the neighborhood for her loud outbursts. "If you live in this neighborhood, you know who she is," White told the San Jose Mercury News.