A man who ambushed and fatally stabbed his estranged wife nearly two dozen times outside her Spring Valley apartment was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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Kandynn Wilson, 34, was found guilty by an El Cajon Superior Court jury of stabbing 29-year-old Ericka Wilson 23 times in the neck on Jan. 28, 2022, after she returned home from work.
Prosecutors said that following six years of marriage that included multiple incidents of domestic violence, the pair were separated for about two years prior to the murder.
According to a prosecution sentencing brief, the defendant planned his wife’s murder for months.
The brief states he first attempted to purchase a gun and later requested vacation time from his job that covered the date of the killing.
One day before the killing, Wilson drove eight hours from his residence in Oakland to San Diego County.
The brief states that Ericka Wilson worked at two Ross stores in Spring Valley and Santee and that Kandynn Wilson drove to both locations that night to wait for her. When the Spring Valley store closed without the victim exiting, he “sped through the parking lot” and headed for her apartment.
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Once there, he parked his vehicle in the parking lot and waited for the victim to arrive in her assigned spot, then attacked her while clad in a mask and gloves, prosecutors wrote in the brief.
A neighbor heard her screaming and chased the defendant away with a baseball bat, the brief states. Kandynn Wilson was unable to flee in his vehicle because of the intervention of neighbors, prosecutors said, so he ran from the apartment building.
He was arrested about four hours later at a 7-Eleven store located about a quarter-mile from the murder scene.
The prosecution’s brief states his car keys were found near the victim’s body and that he was found with blood on his hands and clothing.
Jurors convicted Wilson of first-degree murder, plus a special circumstance allegation of lying in wait and an allegation of using a knife in the slaying.
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