Murder on Main Street

The Chico Police Department is focusing its investigation on whether two transients charged with fatally beating and stabbing a man outside of a Chico convenience store early Sunday morning (Aug. 31) knew the victim prior to his death, according to a member of the CPD’s Detective Bureau.

“From what we’ve been told by witnesses, the verbal altercation that took place before the fight was minimal,” CPD Sgt. Matt Madden said Tuesday (Sept. 2). “It’s a little hard to believe that a few mixed words in a parking lot could lead to such a violent crime, so we’re speaking to people who might know of the assailants’ prior relationship with the victim.”

Madden said several people witnessed the attack that left 44-year-old Randell Sexton lying unresponsive outside of the 7-Eleven store at Main and First streets at about 12:30 a.m. Sunday. Responding officers administered CPR to the victim, but Sexton was pronounced dead on arrival at Enloe Medical Center.

Stephanie Marie Vogel, 23, was arrested behind a nearby building minutes after the attack, and Joshua Epstein, 30, was arrested around 8 a.m. that morning near the corner of East First and Mangrove avenues, according to a police press release. Vogel and Epstein are in the Butte County Jail, charged with murder with bail set at $1 million each. Both the suspects and the victim were known transients, according to authorities.

In addition to receiving multiple stab wounds to his head and upper body, Sexton was also hit several times with a skateboard, according to Madden, who confirmed his department has the entire event on video from the store’s surveillance system, as well as cellphone camera footage taken by a witness. Madden said the nature of the suspects’ relationship to one another is uncertain but that they likely knew each other, as video footage shows them arriving at and leaving the scene of the crime together.

Police are still looking to speak with more witnesses, as well as people who may know Vogel, Epstein or Sexton. Madden was reticent to release other details of the assault, so as not to influence further eyewitness accounts in the ongoing investigation. Anyone with information pertinent to the case is urged to contact the CPD.

Madden said that, though there have been “several stabbings and shootings” reported locally since Jan. 1, Sunday’s incident marked the first known homicide of 2014.

The murder occurred at a time when local law enforcement resources were largely concentrated in the downtown and south campus areas in an effort to curtail Labor Day weekend partying. In addition to a full cadre of CPD patrol units, California Highway Patrol, Butte County Sheriff and Alcoholic Beverage Control officers also helped patrol these areas.

“Pretty much all of our resources at the Chico Police Department were working that night,” said Madden, who added that even several detectives—who are normally on call during weekends—were on duty, and among the first officials to respond to the murder scene.

Madden was reluctant to peg the 7-Eleven location as a problematic property, and praised the store’s owners for working closely with the CPD’s now-defunct TARGET Team in agreeing to stop selling single-serve alcoholic beverages and on other issues.

“It’s not just 7-Eleven,” he said. “We have a lot of problems all over downtown, especially late at night on the weekends; 7-Eleven is open late and tends to be an area where a lot of different kinds of groups of people congregate, but I wouldn’t want to point a finger at the store.”