A man who prosecutors say stabbed five people, two of them fatally, in an attack on July 4 in a California coastal town has been charged with murder, authorities said Tuesday.
Logan Christopher Kelley, 26, was also charged with attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon and assault on a police officer, the district attorney’s office said in a news release. He was charged under a provision known as “special circumstances of multiple murder,” which makes him eligible for the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The attack occurred just after 11 p.m. after Kelley approached a group of people watching fireworks in Huntington Beach, a community southeast of Los Angeles. He had been drinking and taking hallucinogenic drugs, prosecutors said, and began stabbing people with a knife.
Eric Hodges, 42; and William Collins, 47, were killed. Two 35-year-old men and one of their fathers, 68, were injured in the stabbing but were expected to survive, prosecutors said.
Kelley, from the nearby town of Redondo Beach, did not know anyone in the group, prosecutors said. Several people helped arrest him before police arrived, including a 16-year-old boy. Kelley also was charged with assaulting the boy, spitting on a police officer and using a racial slur during his arrest, prosecutors said.
The attack was part of a wave of violence in the U.S., resulting in at least 33 deaths, including 11 in Chicago. The Fourth of July is historically one of the deadliest days of the year in the country.
“A day celebrating America and all the freedoms we all enjoy was thrown into deadly chaos at the hands of a stranger,” said Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer.