WOODLAND — Security video played a starring role in a Yolo County murder trial this week, charting an alleged killer’s movements surrounding the fatal stabbing of a Woodland masseuse.
Collected from businesses near Cottonwood Massage, where victim Junying Lu was found brutally slashed to death on Aug. 21, 2018, the videos capture suspect Rohail Sarwar from the time he purchased the alleged murder weapon to his departure from the crime scene in a condition that caught investigators’ attention.
On his hands, “there’s a red discoloration that would be consistent with having been exposed to blood,” Woodland police Detective Joshua Amoruso testified in Yolo Superior Court on Tuesday as he walked a jury through the videos, taken from a pizza parlor, liquor store and jewelry business.
The footage showed Sarwar spent considerable time in and around Cottonwood Massage that afternoon, starting at about 3:45 p.m. when he walked into Bob’s Liquor and purchased a Four Loko malt beverage, wearing a plaid button-down shirt and distinctive red cap.
After paying cash to clerk Amarlal Gupta, Sarwar moved to a nearby display case, where Gupta said the store kept a collection of pocket knives at the time.
“He said, ‘Give me a knife,’ ” Gupta testified Tuesday through a Nepali interpreter. Sarwar again paid cash, then spent several minutes struggling to close the blue-handled knife until another customer showed him how to fold it.
From there, Sarwar walked to the front of the store, where he appeared to spend several more minutes gazing out a window toward Cottonwood Massage. Gupta said he also was drinking his beer, which isn’t allowed inside the store, so he told Sarwar to leave.
Sarwar threw the beer into a trash can and left, but returned at 4:30 p.m. to retrieve the beverage, the video showed. He then stood outside the business and continued drinking, again looking east toward Cottonwood Massage.
Footage from another angle showed a man leaving the massage business at 4:35 p.m., after which Sarwar is seen walking across the parking lot from Bob’s Liquor and through Cottonwood Massage’s front door.
In her opening statement to the jury, prosecutor Diane Ortiz told jurors that Lu, working by herself, called her boss at 4:36 p.m. to report that “the pee guy is here — he won’t leave.” Investigators say Sarwar earned that moniker weeks earlier by urinating on a massage table after attempting to sexually assault a masseuse.
Lu’s employer told her to tell “the pee guy” she was busy and instruct him to leave, but “less than an hour later, Junying Lu was dead,” Ortiz said.
Prosecutor allege that Sarwar’s repeatedly thwarted demands for sex at Cottonwood Massage served as motive for Lu’s slaying, which Sarwar has denied committing. His public defender, Ron Johnson, has elected to wait until the start of his case to present an opening statement.
While there’s no video of what took place inside the massage parlor — the business’ security camera wasn’t working that day — images from neighboring DJ’s Jewelry showed Sarwar walking casually toward Cottonwood Street at 5:24 p.m., roughly 50 minutes after he entered Cottonwood Massage.
Police would later report finding a mixture of Lu and Sarwar’s blood on a nearby traffic pole at Cottonwood and West Court streets, indicating the suspected killer pushed the pedestrian crossing button before continuing across the street. Bloody clothing also was recovered from Sarwar’s nearby apartment, police said.
In addition to the red substance covering Sarwar’s hands, Amoruso, the Woodland police detective, noted a change to his shirt in the video, which appeared more open at the collar area than it had in previous images. Investigators said they collected two shirt buttons at the crime scene, likely ripped from a garment during a struggle.
Further video footage shows a male customer entering Cottonwood Massage at 5:43 p.m., just before police received a 911 call reporting a woman found dead at the end of a hallway. Lu, 51, had suffered 14 stab wounds, one so vicious that knife tip had broken off into her skull, forensic pathologist Jason Tovar testified this week.
Testimony resumed today in Judge Paul Richardson’s courtroom. The trial is expected to last about three weeks.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene