Police: Suspect in fatal stabbing tied to random knife attacks

A man arrested in a fatal stabbing early Saturday is also accused of two separate stabbings, and purportedly threatening another stranger with a knife shortly before the slaying, the Metropolitan Police Department said in an arrest report.

Cornelius Williams, 33, was identified through surveillance footage, his clothing, and facial recognition technology, the report said.

Williams, who is accused of killing of Leary Adams III, 51, was arrested later that day and booked into the Clark County Detention Center on one count of murder, two counts of attempted murder, and one count of assault with a deadly weapon, jail logs show.

Williams is also being held on two unrelated convictions of being a felon in possession of a gun and burglary of a business, records show.

A warrant for his arrest had been issued four days before Adams’ killing for violating a court-mandated program.

Knife attacks

Police said they were called about 12:45 a.m. to an apartment in the 400 block of East Twain Avenue, near Paradise Road, where they found a mortally wounded Adams.

His girlfriend told investigators that he had gone to a nearby convenience store for a snack, and returned with a stab wound to the neck, the report said.

Adams died at the scene. A phone registered to Williams put him near the scene of the slaying, the report said.

Less than an hour before, a man was in an undisclosed apartment complex parking lot when a man approached him and pulled a knife on him, the report said.

The man, who said he thought he was going to be stabbed, yelled at the man, who then ran away, the report said. The victim pointed out Williams in a photo lineup.

About 20 minutes after police responded to the attack on Adams, a second man was also stabbed in the neck at an undisclosed apartment complex.

The victim told police that his attacker had asked him for a cigarette before he attacked the victim from the back, the report said.

Police also connected Williams to a third knife attack two weeks earlier, when a woman was cut outside a convenience store near where Adams was stabbed, the report said.

Video showed a man matching Williams’ description following and then attacking the woman, the report said.

The three surviving victims told police they didn’t know Williams, the report said.

Adams’ stabbing was not caught on video, but police tracked down video from the store he’d gone through, which captured a man walking quickly behind him.

Contact Ricardo Torres-Cortez at rtorres@reviewjournal.com.