A mom who was beheaded by a man bearing a sword outside her own home in the Bay Area of California reportedly knew the suspect and had a restraining order against him.
The woman who was identified by family members as Karina Castro, 27, was brutally attacked and butchered by the sword-wielding maniac who murdered her in front of horrified on-lookers just outside of her home in San Carlos, around 24 miles away from San Francisco.
According to reports, her head was completely severed from her body which lay just feet away from her home where her two daughters, aged one and seven were waiting.
A man who was identified by the victim’s father as her former boyfriend was arrested by cops later than evening when he callously returned to the gruesome scene of the murder.
Castro’s father told cops that his daughter had a restraining order against her former boyfriend, Jose Landaeta Solano and the family told ABC7 news that Solano is the father of her one-year-old daughter, who had been inside the house as he executed her mother.
Fortunately, neither of the two children witnessed the horrifying attack and Child Protective Services have taken both the girls and the family’s dog and two cats.
“Children are there, scared to come… want their mom,” one cop noted upon entering the house.
Chapel Thorborne, a neighbor who had arrived back to the street shortly after the attack described the unthinkable scene:
“The head was underneath the car and she was laying in the back of the car- just severed,” he said. “And they covered her up.”
Thorborne went on to describe how the killer had callously returned to the neighborhood shortly after butchering Castro and looked nonchalant as he chatted to friends:
“After he cut her head off, he came walking up, him and his two friends,” he told ABC.
“And they walked right by me and they arrested him.”
Another neighbor told NBC that the couple had a volatile relationship and that he had often witnessed them fighting. He also recalled how Castro had mentioned that she was frightened of Solano:
“The night before she was pacing back and forth in front of the house,” said neighbor, Nathan Chan.
“And I heard she was talking really loud on the phone and said ‘it feels like I’ve got a target on my back.’”
According to police reports, the pair had been arguing in the house at around 10:30am on Thursday. The fight spilled onto the street and that’s when Solano used what witnesses described as a samurai sword to murder her. It is not clear whether Solano had taken the weapon from a vehicle or if he had it on his person.
Lt. Eamonn Allen of San Mateo County Sherriff’s Office said released a statement in which he said that that deputies who found the victim in the middle of the street were “a little upset” and in distress by what they’d seen and were offered peer counselling.
“Any time someone loses their life it’s certainly a tragedy. As far as the shocking nature of it, I do know that the deputies that first arrived on scene were a little beset by the scene,” said Allen to ABC before adding that the officers and witnesses were offered professional support.
Meanwhile, the Castro family has said that its focus now is getting the two children back from Child Protective Services.
This story syndicated with permission from For the Love of News