By TERRI VERMEULEN KEITH | City News Service
A man who was convicted of first-degree murder and robbery for using two knives to fatally stab a 67-year-old woman on a Metro train in the Studio City area last year was sentenced today to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Elliott Tramel Nowden, now 47, was convicted Nov. 17 of the April 22, 2024, attack on Mirna Soza Arauz.
Jurors also found true the special-circumstance allegation of murder during the commission of a robbery, along with allegations that he personally used a knife and that the victim was robbed while she was a passenger aboard the train.
Along with the life prison sentence, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Karla D. Kerlin imposed an additional eight years behind bars for the robbery charge.
The victim’s son, Jose Roman Soza, told the judge through a Spanish interpreter that “It was very painful to realize that she was murdered for the things she would give away.” He called her his best friend and said he realized something was wrong when she didn’t return home that morning to cook breakfast for him before he left for work for the day.
“When she didn’t arrive that morning, I felt something on my chest,” he said, telling the judge that he knew something was wrong and called his sisters.
He said that he subsequently received a call from a detective and that he watches detective shows and “knew that this was something horrible and that (it) was going to be the most horrible day of my life.”
“… I hope that justice falls on this monster and he never sees the sun any more,” the victim’s son said.
The victim’s youngest daughter, Nadia Cisne Soza, also called her mother her best friend.
“As long as my mother is happy in heaven, the murderer is going to be miserable on earth,” she said, asking the judge to “put all the weight of justice on him.”
Another of the victim’s daughters, Mirna Roman Soza, said during a conference call with a Spanish interpreter that the family has had to live with her absence in their lives but that they remember her every day.
Speaking directly to the defendant, she said he “took of the life of a person you didn’t need to steal anything from” and she “would have given you anything.”
After the court hearing, defense attorney K.C. Ma told the victim’s family that his client wanted them to know that he was sorry for their loss.
The victim’s son said outside court that he would have preferred to hear it directly from Nowden.
In his sentencing memorandum, Deputy District Attorney Alexander Bott wrote that the defendant “armed himself with two knives and used them to repeatedly stab a 67-year-old victim who was seated, unsuspecting and unable to defend herself” in an attack that was “swift, deliberate and unprovoked.”
The prosecutor told jurors in his closing argument last month that the victim was simply trying to get home after work when “the defendant butchered her” by attacking her with two knives — one in each of his hands —in a crime caught on surveillance video.
“He stabbed her over and over again,” Bott said, noting that Nowden took a bag from the woman that only contained chili cheese fries that she was bringing home to her family from the Tommy’s hamburger restaurant where she worked and that he then pulled the train’s emergency brake so he could escape. “It took her several agonizing minutes to die.”
The prosecutor told jurors that Nowden had stabbed a male USC student without provocation in 2019 while they were aboard the Expo line, saying that attack also involved “precise timing.”
Nowden’s attorney called what happened “sad” and “horrific.”
But he disputed that Nowden — who testified in his own defense — had acted with goal-oriented behavior as the prosecution alleged.
He questioned why police did not get a sample of Nowden’s blood after the killing, noting that investigators kept asking the defendant whether he was high on something.
Nowden’s attorney told jurors his client used methamphetamine every day because that was the only way he felt normal.
The victim had boarded a downtown-bound Metro B (Red) Line train just before 4:45 a.m. that day at the nearby North Hollywood station and was stabbed in an unprovoked attack, authorities said.
She managed to exit the train when it arrived at the Universal City Station in the 3900 block of Lankershim Boulevard in Studio City, where she was found mortally wounded on the platform. She was taken to a hospital, where she died that day.
Nowden was arrested a half-mile away about 20 minutes after the attack.
He has remained behind bars since then.
Criminal proceedings in his case were temporarily halted in July 2024 when the defense questioned his mental competency. He was found mentally competent in September 2024 to stand trial.