A 32-year-old Milpitas woman has been charged with murder after prosecutors say she deliberately ran over a close friend with her SUV in an apartment complex parking lot, and investigators are now examining whether she is also responsible for a second friend’s stabbing death hours later across the county.
Anila Baby was charged on September 1 with the murder of 35-year-old Anjana Hari, according to a criminal complaint filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court. Prosecutors say Hari was struck and killed on August 28 in the parking lot of the Mill Creek apartments in Milpitas, California, where investigators found no skid marks or braking evidence at the scene, a detail they say points to intent rather than an accident.
Court filings allege Baby accelerated from a stopped position as Hari approached the vehicle and ran over her with the passenger-side wheel, and that the killing was carried out with what prosecutors described as planning and premeditation. Baby faces a charge of murder with malice aforethought and a sentencing enhancement for use of a deadly weapon, the vehicle itself.
A second death in the same window
Within roughly two hours of Hari’s death, a second woman, 40-year-old Ann Mary Mathew, was found stabbed to death inside her apartment in San Jose, according to San Jose police and multiple reports citing court records. Mathew’s husband discovered her body after being told of Hari’s death. Investigators have said the two cases appear connected and that Baby is a person of interest in the Mathew killing, though no additional charges have been filed in that case as of this week.
All three women were friends within the South Bay’s Malayali community, immigrants from Kerala, India, and relatives told Indian outlets the women had celebrated the Onam harvest festival together in the days before the killings. Santa Clara County prosecutors have not publicly stated a motive for either death.
What happens next
Baby remains held without bail at Santa Clara County jail pending further proceedings, according to court records. A preliminary hearing has not yet been scheduled. The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office and San Jose Police Department have both said the investigation into Mathew’s killing is ongoing.
The case has drawn significant coverage in India given the victims’ ties to Kerala, while Bay Area outlets have focused on the mechanics of the hit-and-run allegation and the unusual speed with which prosecutors moved to file a murder charge just days after the first death.
Source reporting: KTVU FOX 2 and SFist.
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