Felony charges are expected to be filed Wednesday against a 22-year-old man suspected of fatally stabbing a Menifee resident.
Samuel James McNeal of Menifee was arrested and booked into the Byrd Detention Center in Murrieta Friday on suspicion of murder.
McNeal was being held without bail. His case was under review Tuesday by the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office.
According to Menifee police spokesman Chase Coburn, shortly before 4 p.m. Friday, the suspect was involved in an unspecified confrontation with the victim, identified only as a local man, at a residence on Copper River Road, near Junipero Road.
During the encounter, McNeal allegedly pulled a knife and stabbed the victim several times in the upper body then ran away, Coburn said.
Witnesses called 911, and Menifee police officers converged on the area, along with county fire department paramedics, who pronounced the man dead at the scene.
Coburn said nearby Boulder Ridge Elementary School was placed on lockdown as a precaution while patrol officers fanned out to look for McNeal, who was found about two hours later on East Heritage Lake Drive, only a block away, where he was taken into custody without incident.
The suspect and victim “knew one another,” Coburn said, but a possible motive for the alleged attack wasn’t disclosed.
Background information on McNeal also wasn’t available.