Mental Patient Charged With Stabbing Shannon Collins to Death Had Blood on Shoes and Head

Within a half hour of being arrested for the broad daylight murder of store owner Shannon Collins in May 2012, Charles Edwards was dozing off in a police car.

That was the strongest evidence defense attorney Anthony Robinson presented suggesting that Edwards, 44, who was accidentally released from a mental hospital and is charged with stabbing Collins to death for no reason on Broadway before noon on May 7, 2012, may not have committed the crime.

Robinson showed a video of Edwards dozing in the back of a police car after being arrested by officer Ron Inouye on Campbell Avenue, blocks away from where Collins was killed. 

"He was walking normally," Inouye said of Edwards, whom he stopped because he matched a description of a suspect in the crime. 

"Did he appear to be acting somewhat bizarrely?" asked the attorney?
"No," said the officer, who outside the courtroom said that he was surprised that a murder suspect wouldn't be running away.

Instead, Edwards, who was wearing no shirt and had stashed his shirt in a garbage can, was just walking down the street. He offered no resistance when the officer pulled out his gun and ordered him to lie down. In a video, he appeared calm in the back seat of the car, so calm that he dozed off a few times.

Prosecutor Celia Rowland, however, asked the officer about some evidence that seemed more unusual: the blood on Edwards' shoes and head that the officer noticed and photographed.

Based on the evidence given in the next two days, Judge  Timothy Volkmann will decide whether Edwards will stand trial for murder with the maximum sentence of life in prison. Rowland, the prosecutor, said she didn't think she could find a Santa Cruz jury that would approve a death sentence.

Rowland's first witness was a county medical examiner who showed chilling photos of seven stab wounds that led to Collins's death and the murder weapon, a blood-stained knife. 

Rowland said the evidence will show that Edwards is fit to stand trial and had knowledge of right and wrong at the time of the attack. 

She said she wants to see Edwards sent to jail for life, "where he can't do this to someone again," rather than to a mental hospital, from which he could be released.

Edwards, who wore an orange and white triple extra large jail suit,  was shaking at times during the hearing. At one point he laughed at something with his attorney. At another, he called out in the courtroom.

When Rowland said that an attorney mentioned "bizarre" behavior, Edwards yelled out "irrational" as if to correct the word. However, the word was bizarre. He had outbursts in earlier hearings.

Rowland is expected to call an eyewitness to the attack when the hearing continues Tuesday. Among those following the case in the courtroom were members of Take Back Santa Cruz and Vice-Mayor Lynn Robinson. 

Collins owned the store Camouflage in downtown Santa Cruz.