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Crime Jul 22, 2023
| Photo courtesy of the Long Beach Police Department
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A 21-year-old man was ordered Friday to stand trial in connection with an alleged stabbing rampage in Long Beach that left a woman dead and several others injured last year.
Superior Court Judge Laura Laesecke found there was sufficient evidence to require Yohance Dallen Sharp to proceed to trial on one count each of murder and delaying, obstructing or resisting an officer, two counts each of assault with a deadly weapon and attempted robbery and six counts of attempted murder.
The murder charge stems from the slaying last Oct. 17 of 62-year-old Tina Hook, who died at a hospital after being stabbed and suffering 19 sharp-force injuries early that morning in the 1100 block of Atlantic Avenue in an attack that was caught on surveillance videotape.
Sharp is also accused of attacking three people, including one who was stabbed, last Oct. 15, along with charges involving five other people, including three others who were injured.
Long Beach police Officer Jeremy Gil testified during the hearing that he was looking for a suspect in a stabbing that had just occurred at Ocean Boulevard and Fourth Place on Oct. 17 when he saw Sharp — whom he identified in court — wielding a knife and chasing a female jogger who was initially unaware that she was being followed.
Sharp was eventually taken into custody after throwing the knife into the air, and the weapon was subsequently located after a search by police, Gil said.
The officer said he subsequently located surveillance video from a nearby residence in which he heard the defendant say, “I don’t care who I kill.”
Sharp sat in an interview room at the Long Beach Police Department for five hours, saying to himself without being questioned that he knew exactly what he did and speaking to a trash can at one point, Long Beach police Detective Donald Collier said under questioning by Deputy District Attorney Tricia Halstead and defense attorney Ernest Hinman.
Sharp’s attorney told the judge that his client’s actions following his arrest showed “the bizarre mental state he was in” at the time, with the judge responding that it involved conduct after the killing.
“I do find that Mr. Sharp is a danger to the community, very much so,” the judge said in ordering Sharp to remain jailed on just over $9 million bail.
Sharp remains jailed while awaiting arraignment Aug. 4 at the Long Beach courthouse.
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