A witness forced Kandynn Wilson to flee after prosecutors said he stabbed Ericka Wilson outside her apartment.
SPRING VALLEY, Calif. — A neighbor who saw Ericka J. Wilson being attacked chased her estranged husband with a bat, prosecutors said, forcing him to run from a Spring Valley apartment complex before his arrest hours later.
That intervention became one of the central facts in the murder case against Kandynn Wilson, 34, who was sentenced May 27 to life in prison without parole plus one year. A San Diego County jury had found him guilty in December of first-degree murder and a lying-in-wait special circumstance. Prosecutors said the neighbor’s response stopped Wilson from leaving in his vehicle after he stabbed Ericka Wilson, 29, in the parking lot where she lived.
The attack unfolded near midnight at an apartment complex in the 1600 block of Canyon Drive. Ericka Wilson had returned from work and was getting out of her vehicle when Wilson approached wearing a ski mask, grabbed her and stabbed her 23 times in the neck, prosecutors said. Authorities said she called 911 as she tried to escape. The neighbor saw the attack and chased Wilson with a bat, according to the district attorney’s office. That pursuit forced Wilson to flee on foot, leaving his vehicle, gloves and the knife behind.
Other neighbors also played a role in the moments after the stabbing, according to accounts from the prosecution’s sentencing brief. They kept Wilson from leaving in his car, prosecutors said. His keys were later found near Ericka Wilson’s body. The public record does not name the neighbor who chased him or describe what that person saw before intervening. It does show that the scene shifted quickly from a planned attack to a search for a fleeing suspect. Deputies later found Wilson a few blocks away at a 7-Eleven, about four hours after the killing.
The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department said deputies were called at about 11:55 p.m. Jan. 27, 2022, for a report of a woman calling for help. They found Ericka Wilson unresponsive in the parking lot with obvious traumatic injuries. Deputies and firefighters tried to save her, but she died at the scene. The Sheriff’s Homicide Unit took over the case and identified Kandynn Wilson as the suspect. Sheriff’s officials said he was arrested nearby and booked into the San Diego Central Jail on suspicion of murder.
Prosecutors said Wilson’s path to the Canyon Drive parking lot began far earlier that day, hundreds of miles away. He took a vacation day from work and drove from Oakland to San Diego County, officials said. His first plan was to wait at Ericka Wilson’s workplace and attack her when she left. Because she worked at two Ross stores in the area, prosecutors said, Wilson went to the wrong location and later drove to her apartment complex. He reclined the seat in his vehicle and waited for her to come home.
The district attorney’s office said the killing followed months of planning. Court filings cited in later reporting said Wilson first tried to buy a gun and later requested vacation time that included the date of the attack. Prosecutors also said he wore a mask and gloves, details they used to argue that the attack was not sudden but prepared. “This defendant murdered his estranged wife in cold blood displaying a vicious brutality in lying in wait and stabbing her multiple times,” District Attorney Summer Stephan said after the sentencing.
The Wilsons had been married for six years and shared one child. They had separated before the killing, and prosecutors said there had been multiple domestic violence incidents during the relationship. The record released after sentencing does not give a full public account of those earlier incidents. It does identify Ericka Wilson as the mother of the couple’s child and as a worker returning home from a late shift. An online memorial message described her as smart, funny, hard working, determined and loyal, saying there would never be anyone else like her.
The jury’s findings carried major legal weight. Wilson was convicted of first-degree murder, and jurors also found true a special circumstance allegation that he was lying in wait. They found that he used a knife in the killing. The sentence of life without parole plus one year followed those findings. Deputy District Attorney Alexandra Lorens prosecuted the case. The district attorney’s office said the verdict and sentence reflected the work of law enforcement and the prosecution team, as well as the jury’s service in weighing the evidence from the 2022 homicide.
Stephan connected the case to intimate partner violence in San Diego County. She said such violence remains one of the most common and dangerous forms prosecutors confront. Her office said seven people were killed by a current or former intimate partner in 2024, and one additional person was killed during a domestic violence-related incident. That was higher than the five domestic violence-related homicides recorded the prior year, though officials said the figure remained below the average from the previous two decades. The county’s 2025 figures were still pending when the sentence was announced.
The physical scene described in the public record was narrow but stark: an apartment parking lot, a woman’s call for help, neighbors responding, and deputies and firefighters trying to save her. Prosecutors said Wilson had planned to leave in his own vehicle after the attack, but the neighbor with the bat and others at the complex disrupted that plan. When he was located, prosecutors said, he was covered in Ericka Wilson’s blood. The knife, gloves and vehicle remained part of the evidence he left behind.
Wilson is now serving a life-without-parole sentence for Ericka Wilson’s killing. Any next court action would come through a post-conviction filing or appeal after the May 27 sentencing.
Author note: Last updated June 23, 2026.