A trial started today in the case of a San Francisco man charged with fatally stabbing the mother of his young daughter in 2007 and sexually assaulting two of the woman’s other daughters at a home in Bernal Heights.
During her opening statements this morning, prosecutor Diana Garcia said the defendant, Umar Hudson, 35, was “like a virus” in the home in the 900 block of Ellsworth Street where the crimes occurred.
Hudson is accused of fatally stabbing Jernell Scott, 32, on April 6, 2007. Scott was the mother of his daughter, who was 16 months old at the time of the stabbing.
“He left her in a pool of blood naked in the street,” Garcia said.
Hudson also allegedly sexually assaulted two of Scott’s other daughters, who were 9 and 13 years old at the time of the attacks, Garcia said.
Garcia said Hudson’s anxiety over being arrested in the sexual assault cases led him to attack Scott, who she said was found by neighbors naked and bleeding in the middle of the street.
Scott and Hudson had known each other since high school and had a previous relationship, then got back together in 2005.
Garcia said Hudson, known to friends as “Rasta” because he used to have dreadlocks, allegedly sexually assaulted the two girls over the course of several months, forcing them to perform oral copulation and other acts.
Both girls eventually reported the assaults, and DNA evidence later identified Hudson as the attacker. However, he remained on the loose until the day of the murder, when he came to the home on Ellsworth Street, according to Garcia.
She said that after some sort of altercation inside the home, Scott ran outside naked, screaming “He’s stabbing me, stop! Stop! Help!”
Garcia said neighbors reported seeing a man, later identified as Hudson, standing over her in the street and repeatedly stabbing her, then going back inside the home and coming back out with another knife, with which he stabbed her again.
Hudson then went back into the home, changed clothes and went out to the street where a crowd had gathered and police had arrived, according to Garcia.
Although he tried to blend in as a bystander, neighbors told police that he was the stabber, and officers arrested him and found a backpack he was carrying was filled with bloody clothes, Garcia said.
The medical examiner’s office discovered that Scott had suffered more than 40 sharp-force injuries — 39 stab wounds and several smaller incisions.
At the end of her opening statement, Garcia said the evidence she will present at the trial “is irrefutable,” and shows that “this defendant not only molested Jernell Scott’s daughters, but took away their mother’s life forever.”
Hudson’s defense attorney, Alfredo Vea, declined to give an opening statement.
The trial, which Judge Jerome Benson said is expected to last at least a week, continues this afternoon with testimony from one of Scott’s daughters who was assaulted.
Dan McMenamin, Bay City News
Want more news, sent to your inbox every day? Then how about subscribing to our email newsletter? Here’s why we think you should. Come on, give it a try.
