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SAN MATEO COUNTY — Bicyclists pedaling the winding roads and day hikers drawn to the parkland trails are far more common sights than police cruisers and crime scene tape in the hills west of Woodside. There hasn’t been a murder here in more than 30 years, authorities say.
But now sheriff’s deputies are investigating two fatal stabbings in two nights along the same isolated stretch of Skyline Boulevard, and have arrested a Pacifica man they say is responsible for one and perhaps both killings.
Late Tuesday night, about 24 hours after a taxi driver was discovered stabbed to death in a dirt turnout, deputies were sent back to the scene to look for more evidence. They made a shocking discovery: A tow truck driver who was mortally wounded and pleading for help, and a suspect fleeing the area.
As deputies attempted to help the wounded man the suspect drove toward them, according to the sheriff’s office. A deputy opened fire at the oncoming vehicle, which crashed into a ditch near the intersection of Skyline Boulevard and Swett Road.
The stabbing victim, 31-year-old John Sione Pekipaki, died at the scene.
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The driver of the car, 26-year-old Malik Dosouqi, was not hit by the gunfire and was arrested as a suspect in Pekipaki’s killing, according to the sheriff’s office.
Authorities have not officially named Dosouqi as a suspect in the first fatal stabbing, which took the life of 32-year-old Abdulmalek Nagi Nasher, a taxi driver whose family said he disappeared late Monday night after a customer called him for a ride.
But Lt. Stephanie Josephson, a spokeswoman for the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office, said Wednesday that investigators are examining whether the cases are related, given their similarities: both were fatal stabbings and happened on the same stretch of Skyline Boulevard.
“Investigators are actively looking into a connection between the two homicides,” Josephson said.
The investigation first began Monday at about 11:30 p.m. when a sheriff’s deputy found Nasher dead in a dirt turnout just off of Skyline Boulevard, near the Skeggs Point vista in the El Corte de Madera Creek Preserve, about three miles north of the unincorporated area of Sky Londa.
Nasher had left his house in Pacifica a little before 10 p.m. Monday after receiving a call from a customer asking for a ride from El Granada to Santa Cruz, his cousin, Abdul Alghaithy, said Wednesday.
After he didn’t return home and wasn’t answering his phone, his wife became worried, calling family members and friends before alerting the sheriff’s department, Alghaithy said.
Nasher, who emigrated from Yemen about 12 years ago and became an American citizen after arriving in the US, leaves behind his 29-year-old wife, Anwar, and his four-year-old daughter, Yomna.
A SWAT team scoured the area Tuesday morning and found evidence believed to be related to the homicide, the sheriff’s office said, but did not make any arrests and eventually ended the search.
“Investigators continued to actively investigate this case and began to develop important leads,” according to the sheriff’s office.
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Around 11 p.m. Tuesday night, detectives sent patrol deputies back to the scene of the homicide to search for more evidence, the sheriff’s office said.
Citing their open investigations, authorities have declined to answer many questions about the killings — such as why Nasher and Pekipaki were targeted and why deputies were sent back to the scene Tuesday night.
Just before midnight, deputies searching the area heard a person calling for help about 50 yards from their location, then found Pekipaki and saw Dosouqi driving toward them, the sheriff’s office said.
Dosouqi is still recovering from his injuries at a hospital and has not yet been criminally charged or booked into jail, San Mateo County District Attorney Steven Wagstaffe said. Dosouqi’s injuries are not believed to be serious, Wagstaffe said, and prosecutors plan to charge him once he is medically cleared.
Earlier this year, Dosouqi was arrested on misdemeanor charges of resisting an officer and disturbing the peace. Wagstaffe said Dosouqi had been walking along the side of Highway 1 in Half Moon Bay and kept trying to touch firefighters who came to the scene to check on him, then struggled with several officers who tried to pull him away from the road. Dosouqi pleaded no contest to one count of disturbing the peace on May 31 and was sentenced to probation.
Wednesday afternoon, police cars and officers in body armor swarmed the residential Pacifica neighborhood where Dosouqi lived with his parents and younger brother, said Jeremy Manukainiu, 22, who lives a few houses down from the family.
Dosouqi’s mother answered the door, and screamed when police arrived, Manukainiu said.
“They jumped out and they’re banging on the door,” he said. “She was frightened, she was afraid.”
Officers searched the family’s home and Dosouqi’s car — a white BMW parked in front of the house, Manukainiu said. No one answered the door at the two-story gray home Wednesday evening.
In Woodside, the killings this week have shocked neighbors in the quiet and affluent area.
“Usually the most commotion you’re going to have is somebody crashing” on the winding road, said Justin Sisley, a 35-year-old PayPal employee who lives near where authorities arrested Dosouqi on Wednesday. “I’d like to think that this is a fluke.”
