Berkeley Hills residents reckon with fatal stabbing that rocks neighborhood

In a quiet Berkeley Hills neighborhood on Sunday morning, a strange sense of calm had descended on a pair of streets where, just a day prior, two women and a man were stabbed, one fatally.

Homeowners walked their dogs around the block. A family with small children played in the front yard. An older woman watered her plants. On the surface, it was a morning like many others in the wooded enclave just a few blocks from Tilden Park. But for residents who knew the woman who died and her family, things felt far from normal.

“I just don’t understand how this could ever happen,” said Mardi Sicular, the victim’s next-door neighbor on Overlook Road. “We’re just absolutely devastated. It’s so final.”

Booking records show Berkeley police have a person in custody identified as Jonah Jeremiah Roper, an unemployed 36-year-old man. Roper, who has an extensive criminal record, is facing charges of attempted murder, elder abuse, vehicle theft and child abuse. Police as of Sunday afternoon still had not officially identified Roper as the assailant.

According to neighbors, the events began on Overlook Road, where a man got into a struggle with two residents of a house — a man and a woman. In the initial 911 call, at 12:33 p.m., the incident was described as a family disturbance. The suspect’s relationship to the residents of the house had not been identified publicly by police as of Sunday.

The man fatally stabbed the woman, then chased the man who lived in the house down the block to Middlefield Road. There, the fleeing man encountered a group of people walking their dogs. The group retreated into a house to call the police. It was in that house that the second woman — one of the walkers, an apparent bystander — was stabbed.

Lisa Snow, a resident on Middlefield Road, said the suspect then stole a car from the owner of the house where the second stabbing occurred.

Officers undertook a vehicle pursuit that ended at Gilman and Ninth streets in Berkeley, where the suspect was taken into custody.