Murder defendant stabbed California mother and daughter to end their screams, detective testifies

Jacob Allen Wright removed his shoes to avoid making any noise as he slipped through an open sliding glass door and tiptoed up the stairs of a Rancho Cucamonga home in the dead of night on March 7, 2021, carrying a knife with a serrated edge and a black handle with grooves for fingers.

Wright was feeling “empty” and “lonely” that night, according to testimony by San Bernardino County sheriff’s Detective Malcolm Page at the preliminary hearing in Wright’s double-murder trial on Wednesday, Jan. 28. Wright, who was 19 at the time, left his Rancho Cucamonga home about 2 a.m. and went for a walk that ended after 3 miles at the end of a cul-de-sac on Bergano Place.

Wright, wearing a cloth COVID mask, bypassed two bedrooms with closed doors and entered a bedroom through an open door where Jia Jia, 44, slept with her 8-year-old daughter, Ruby Meng, Page said.

“I heard Jia scream,” a houseguest that night, Zhu Zhu, testified in Superior Court in Rancho Cucamonga. “She screamed Ruby’s name. Ruby screamed, ‘Mom! Mom!’ ”

Those screams, Page testified, unnerved Wright.

“He became afraid and wanted the screams to stop. He decided to stab the persons screaming,” Page said.

“All of a sudden,” Zhu testified, “it was quiet.”

But soon those screams would come from Zhu, who had been watching videos on her phone while “half asleep” in an adjacent bedroom after getting up to prepare tea.

Wright saw Zhu and hid behind the open door, Page testified.

Zhu, who was 38 at the time of the attack, said a man then grabbed her with his left hand and stabbed her in the left shoulder and head.

“I thought I was dying,” Zhu testified, crying. “I can hear my blood is draining out and streaming on the floor like a river.”

Jia’s husband, Xianxi Meng, picked her up. He had gone to bed in a different room that night because he stayed out late playing poker and didn’t want to disturb his wife. Zhu found her phone and called 911 as the man fled the house.

Page, the lead detective on the case, listed the carnage he said Wright left behind, reading from a binder of documents about 7 inches thick: Jia was cut 97 times — 77 wounds that pierced the skin, and 20 that were deeper than long. She was stabbed in the head, neck, torso, arms, legs and heart.

Ruby was cut only six times, but two of those stab wounds, more than 3 inches deep, pierced her heart.

Their bodies were found on the floor next to the bloody bed.

Zhu had physical therapy for four years after the attack and said she suffers from PTSD.

Wright confessed to the crimes, Page testified, and wrote a letter of apology.

Defense attorney Gary P. Ablard did not present a case.

After the testimony, Judge Michael A. Knish ordered Wright held on all charges: two counts of murder, one count of attempted murder, possession of child pornography depicting sexual sadism and a second count of possession of child pornography for photos that Deputy District Attorney David Collins said were mailed to Wright at West Valley Detention Center after his arrest.

Wright, 24, has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

District Attorney Jason Anderson said he plans to seek the death penalty if Wright is convicted as charged.

“You have a double murder and an attempted murder in the sanctity of their own home, and the manner in which death was inflicted, that was the child’s worst nightmare,” in the bed of a parent, Anderson said in an interview.

Anderson said investigators don’t know why Wright picked that home to invade. There is no indication that he attempted to enter any other homes, Anderson said.

Zhu was not asked to identify Wright in court. Prosecutors have not said how Wright, who was arrested more than a month after the attack, was linked to the crimes. Ablard attempted to solicit that information on his cross-examination of Page, but Collins objected to the question as irrelevant, and Knish agreed.

But Collins, in arguing his objection, referred to DNA that was collected from Wright during a traffic stop. He was arrested at a second traffic stop on April 13, 2021.

Wright, wearing olive-green jail clothing and orange shoes, sat quietly during the hearing. Although his arms (along with his feet) were shackled, he took notes on a yellow legal pad.

One of the child pornography charges stemmed from what sheriff’s Deputy Robert Sanchez testified were hundreds of images of prepubescent children downloaded from Wright’s computer.

At West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga, jail employees screening mail this June found a letter to Wright that contained a photo of a girl along with the message: “You asked for the Holy Grail, and I sent the best one first,” testified Deputy Melissa Carrillo. That prompted a search of Wright’s cell, where they found similar images of barely clad young girls in sexualized poses, Carrillo said.

Wright is due back in court on Feb. 4. He is being held without the possibility of bail.