San Jose: Son charged with murder in stabbing of local chess mentor
SAN JOSE — Prosecutors have filed a murder charge against a man suspected of killing his father and injuring his mother in a stabbing at their Alviso home last weekend, according to court records.
Kevin Michael Jones, 37, was formally charged Wednesday with murder and assault with a deadly weapon in the early Sunday attack ended with the death of his father, 69-year-old Michael Jones, and his mother being rushed to a hospital with stabbing injuries.
Kevin Jones was also charged with the attempted kidnapping of a child at a relative’s nearby home minutes before the stabbing occurred, according to San Jose police and a criminal complaint filed by the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office.
He is being held without bail at the county Main Jail in San Jose. He was scheduled for arraignment Wednesday.
According to police, officers were called at 12:06 a.m. to a home at Summerset Mobile Estates in the 2000 block of Gold Street for a report of a stabbing, and found two injured people. Michael Jones died at the scene, and his wife was rushed to a hospital and is expected to survive.
Soon after, patrol officers aided by a police helicopter located Kevin Jones and arrested him.
After the arrest, investigators connected the stabbing call to an emergency call made minutes earlier from a nearby home of another relative, in which Kevin Jones was alleged to have tried to force a child to leave with him, police said. He allegedly threatened the child and family there with a knife, but reportedly gave up and fled to his parents’ home.
The criminal complaint indicates prosecutors will request that Kevin Jones be kept in jail after his arraignment, with allegations accompanying all three felony counts referencing that he “has engaged in violent conduct that indicates a serious danger to society.”
Court records show that at the time of his arrest Sunday, Kevin Jones was the subject of an active bench warrant, issued Thursday for his failure to appear in court for charges related to an October 2019 domestic-violence assault allegation in Los Gatos. As recently as last fall, he was under court-ordered mental-health treatment after he was charged with vandalism for breaking a window and glass door at a Santa Clara liquor store in September 2019.
Records also show that Kevin Jones’ history in criminal court dating back to 2004 includes arrests and charges for DUI, assault with a deadly weapon, robbery and burglary.
Michael Jones was remembered as a beloved coach with Bay Area Chess, a nonprofit that runs after-school programs for thousands of Bay Area school children. He was said to have particularly excelled in teaching elementary-aged children to get a grasp of the game.
He had been coaching steadily in San Jose and Los Altos until about six weeks ago, when he was forced to take break to undergo treatment for lung cancer.
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