Riverside police received several calls about a woman with stab wounds on Golden Avenue in the city’s La Sierra neighborhood.
The woman, 64-year-old Ke Chieh Meng from Riverside, was bleeding from her abdomen and was taken to a local hospital, police said. She died of her injuries.
Shortly after the attack, police received calls from neighbors in the area who reported “a passing woman walking through their gardens looking suspicious,” Riverside police said.
Agents who responded to the calls safely held the woman, identified as 23-year-old Darlene Stephanie Montoya of Monterey Park in Los Angeles County.
“When our detectives interviewed the suspect, they encountered nothing to suggest she had attacked the victim because of her race,” said Riverside Police spokesman Ryan Railsback.
Police said Meng was walking her two small dogs along Golden Avenue on Saturday morning when she was randomly confronted, attacked and stabbed by Montoya, who then fled the scene.
Montoya was admitted to the Robert Presley Detention Center on suspicion of murder, a gun violation and being under the influence of an illegal substance. She is being held without bail.
Police say Montoya was previously arrested by Riverside police on March 30 after assaulting a woman with a skateboard near a mall near the 91 highway overpass.
Officers arrested and placed Montoya in prison for assault with a deadly weapon, but she was released shortly afterwards on the basis of a “notice to appear” over the current Riverside bail contingency plan during the Covid-19 pandemic.