A man stabbed to death earlier this month in Vallejo was a longtime property owner who was set to testify against a group of young tenants who allegedly stabbed him with a samurai sword a little over two years ago, according to court records and a friend of the victim.
The victim, identified as 82-year-old Curtis Lind by a GoFundMe page and his friend, Thomas Young, was stabbed in the neck around 2:30 p.m. Jan. 17 by an assailant wearing a mask and black beanie, according to the Vallejo Police Department. The fatal attack happened on the sidewalk outside Lind’s property on the 300 block of Lemon Street, where multiple trailers and other equipment sit crowded in a yard behind a locked gate.
It was not the first alleged attempt on Lind’s life. On November 13, 2022, he was injured during a violent dispute with tenants at his Lemon Street property, according to police and court records.
Young, who said Lind was a close friend, told Open Vallejo in a Friday interview that Lind had been impaled through the chest with a sword in a fight with several tenants who had stopped paying rent during the pandemic. The squatters had become increasingly threatening and violent as Lind sought to have them evicted from his property, including by throwing rocks at him, according to Young.
Early that morning, several of the tenants asked Lind to come out of his trailer home to help them with an issue, but instead “jumped him with a bunch of knives and swords, apparently with the intent of chopping him up and dissolving him in a bath of chemicals, which they had prepared,” Young said.
Lind survived the attack but was hospitalized for a month, eventually losing his right eye, Young said. Court records show that Lind shot two of his attackers, injuring one person and killing 31-year-old Emma Borhanian.
Solano County prosecutors charged Suri Dao and Alexander Jeffrey Leatham with murder, attempted murder, and aggravated mayhem for the death of their companion, Borhanian, and the attempted killing of Lind, according to court records. Attorneys from the public defender’s office who represent Dao and Leatham did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Borhanian’s family set up a GoFundMe page to cover the costs of her funeral, raising just over $20,000. The page does not mention the alleged attack.
District Attorney Krishna Abrams wrote in a recent court filing that there is less evidence in the case than a typical homicide. She noted that there is no surveillance video, firearm ballistics evidence, or social media records from the incident. Instead, prosecutors relied on two main witnesses, Lind and another man over 80 years old, for their case against the tenants, court records show. Both witnesses were found to have significant memory decline, according to court records.
“Mr. Lind is the only eye-witness to this case and his testimony is critical for the People to have the ability to prove their case,” prosecutors wrote in court papers filed Jan. 16 — a day before Lind died — also noting: “These defendants are extremely dangerous, they have both tried to escape from custody.”
Three investigators from the District Attorney’s Office, including Chief District Attorney Investigator Mason Mineni, responded to the scene of the stabbing, which is unusual for a routine homicide investigation. They were joined by four Vallejo police detectives.
Police have announced no arrests in the case as of Monday. Vallejo police spokesperson Sgt. Rashad Hollis declined to comment for this story. The district attorney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Young told Open Vallejo that Lind had been living in fear since his stabbing in 2022. After the attack, Lind moved away from Vallejo and mostly stayed with a friend in San Mateo County. He told Young that he carried a gun for protection. Although Lind still frequented Vallejo and owned the yard on Lemon Street, he had been trying to sell the property, Young said.
“He was generally afraid that they were going to track him down and kill him,” Young said. “He was generally scared — for good reason, obviously.”
Young said Lind was a kind person who “went out of his way to help people.” He cleaned up a beachfront area on Lemon Street and tried to convince city officials they should use cruise ships to house the homeless population. Young said his friend was passionate about boating and owned several ships, which he lived on for a time. In fact, Lind first met one of his alleged attackers through the local boating community. He rented a portion of his property to them under the impression that they planned to start a business involving box trucks, Young said.
“He tended to not have very good judgment in his choice of people,” Young said. “That’s partly how these people got into his life, because he didn’t have the critical judgment to see that they were bad, at least at the beginning.”
Young said he found used surgical equipment, more than a dozen laptops, and other expensive electronics stashed inside the box trucks when he searched Lind’s property after the 2022 attack. He described the tenants’ accommodations as “just creepy in the extreme.”
Young said he contacted Vallejo police, leaving a voicemail on the day after Lind’s death and sending an email several days later with detailed information about the tenants, who he believes are connected to his friend’s death. He said he has received no reply from detectives on the case.
In the GoFundMe page, Lind’s family said he “loved life and everything it had to offer.”
“His murder was a senseless act,” the fundraiser organizers wrote. “He was a senior citizen trying to live his life to the best of his ability despite how much he was going through physically and mentally after being attacked two years ago.”
