BART police arrested a suspect on Sunday who allegedly stabbed a 54-year-old woman on a train on Saturday morning as the train approached 24th Street Mission station.
The attack sent the woman to the hospital with “serious injuries,” according to a statement from BART officials.
The man is Jovany Portades, 34, according to BART police, which said that a surveillance camera “caught an initial image” of the suspect that helped police identify him.
Portades, transit officials said, “was spotted by an alert Station Agent at Fruitvale Station” near 2 p.m. on Sunday. “The Station Agent contacted BART Police, who arrested the suspect without incident.”
On Saturday, BART police had released a photo of the man, whom they described as a “possible Asian male,” who was about 5-foot-8 and 160 pounds, with a mustache and black braided hair wrapped in a knot on top of his head. He wore a black jacket with an orange liner, a black shirt with a white logo, gray and black cargo pants, and dark colored boots. He carried a black duffel bag.
A San Francisco police source said the incident is being investigated as a possible attempted murder.
The woman was on an Antioch train and was allegedly stabbed in an “unprovoked attack” around 8:10 a.m. She got off the train at 24th Street Mission station and got help from a station agent before she was taken to the hospital in an ambulance.
BART spokesperson Jim Allison said the 24th Street station was closed from about 8:41 a.m. to 9:25 a.m. while police investigated.
Anyone with information can call the BART Police Investigations anonymous tip line at (510) 464-7011. For urgent matters, call (510) 464-7000 or 9-1-1.
A big thank you to the station agent. Those folks are under appreciated and yet are vital to the smooth operation of the entire system. Thank your station agents as you commute this morning. Hell, thank them every day.
Excuse the early-morning typo. A big thank you to /both/ station agents, the first of whom helped the victim.
How about a follow up on why this guy was out of jail. His last round in the courts was a plea bargain after a long history of crime.
Pamela Price apparently thought that the 8th second chance would be the charm.
For one thing, none of his previous crimes (“drug sales, sale of ammunition to a minor, receipt of stolen property, evading an officer against traffic, and robbery, according to court records,” reports the Chronicle) was a violent crime. What evidence was there that he would go from evading an officer to attempted murder? Or should we just indefinitely lock up everyone who is convicted of any type of crime? Just in case?
Also, all but one of his previous crimes happened in or near Vallejo, but go ahead, try to blame this one on Pamela Price.
Portades has several felony convictions for crimes including sale of ammunition to a minor.
He was arrested in 2011 for suspicion of firing an unregistered, loaded firearm after shooting a gun at an empty Vallejo school.
That wasn’t a response to my questions. (Nobody has responded.)
From the Chronicle: “He was on probation after being convicted in a robbery case in September 2023 when he was arrested for a new robbery in January in Alameda County. That case was dismissed as part of a plea bargain that allowed him to admit a violation of probation.”
“I’ve further learned convicted robber Jovany Portades, wanted in unprovoked stabbing of woman on @SFBART in SF, picked up new robbery case in Jan. that was tossed as part of plea deal w/@AlamedaCountyDA in which he was allowed to admit to probation violation” -Henry K. Lee
Cynthia, from the Chronicle article – “Last year he pleaded no contest to robbery charges for breaking into a Berkeley home in the middle of the night and punching a victim “20 to 40” times, police said, before stealing the person’s cellphone and laptop.” That is a violent crime. Price is DA for Alameda County. Berkeley is in Alameda. Her office handled that case. The guy did not do significant jail time for his violent crimes.
We can disagree what should be done with people like Portades but we should all agree on the facts. Those are the facts.
Can we PLEASE hire more police in the Bay Area?
We’re not going to stop stabbings like this by giving the Dream Keepers money to hold parties.
How many are you thinking? Seems like you would need an order of magnitude more to prevent or deter crimes like this in the first place. That doesn’t seem like a good use of money. A similar effect could be achieved by spending (a fraction of) that money in other ways.
How about having enough BART police that there is an officer at every set of fare gates in every BART station. Enough to make sure everyone riding every train is a fare payer. Make that the number and let’s see how that works.
Okay, I think that’s a good starting point. Fifty stations, two shifts: that’s $12.3 M to $20.3 M per year (going by the salaries listed on BART PD’s hiring page). That’s not necessarily additional cost, since some of the officers could be reassigned, but that seems like a huge price to pay. That’s certainly not going to break even when considering fares recouped by now-paying riders.
Okay. There are 55 BART stations. Imagine three fare gates per station, so 165 gates. Two officers per gate, and two shifts per day, so 550*3*2*2= 660 shifts per day. And then they’ll need additional supervisors, HR clerks, etc etc.
Where are you going to pay for that?
When you try to skip a fare in Tokyo a transit worker is on you immediately forcing you to pay or turn around. Why can’t we have that here?
I would also like to know how many cops this person is imagining. One per BART car, perhaps? Perhaps one per Muni car, while we’re at it. Maybe one per Muni bus? I’m sure that wouldn’t be expensive or bring on all kinds of other unwanted consequences, no sir.
This whole “don’t bother trying to stop fare evaders” plan is going so well.
We may be Gotham City but we don’t need a Batman. We need to hire more police officers, including on BART.
Defunding the police did not work and the money ended up in the pockets of Shamann Walton’s cronies.
Walk me through your thinking here. How would more police have helped? Are you proposing that there be a police officer on every train? One on every platform? I’ll remind you that it was a station agent, not a police officer, that located the suspect. From there the police were called in and the arrest was made. Again, how would more police have helped?
Can’t wait to hear what kind of sob story the public defender throws together to justify his lifetime of criminal behavior.
If adding more police is too spendy, allowing citizens to arm themselves would be paid for by the citizens. Felons would still be denied that right and they’d never know who was carrying. No restrictions at all on concealed carry in Boise, Idaho (exept schools etc) and people aren’t shooting each other. I know that’s an absurd idea for California, let alone SF, but subverting the dominant paradigm is uncomfortable…
“Possible Asian” – you know we all we the pic right?
As you see from the picture he is possibly Asian. What’s your point?