Court Dates Ahead For Monte Sereno Murder Suspects

The three men arrested in connection with the brutal home-invasion of Silicon Valley entrepreneur Raveesh “Ravi” Kumra will begin the new year before a judge.
 
Deangelo Austin, 21 was arrested by Sacramento police on Saturday afternoon and transported to the Santa Clara County jail, according to Los Gatos-Monte Sereno Police Sgt. Kerry Harris. A jail spokesman said he will be arraigned Thursday afternoon.
 
The other two suspects are also due in court this week.
 
Lucas Anderson, 26, of San Jose was arrested three days before Dec. 26 while already in custody in Santa Clara County jail on an unrelated burglary charge. He was charged with Kumra’s murder and charged a day later. He is due back in court this Friday.
 
Anderson has an extensive criminal past in Santa Clara County, charged with 44 mostly misdemeanor criminal counts between 2008 and 2012 in Santa Clara County. Court documents list him as a transient, whose most charges are for public intoxication and trespassing. One officer who arrested him after finding him passed out in front of a home on East William and 10th streets in San Jose wrote in the report that he was known to police as “a frequently intoxicated transient.”
 
The third suspect – 21-year-old Javier Garcia – was arrested by Oakland police Dec. 27 and is due to face a judge on Wednesday. 
 
Police Chief Scott Seaman said the department had nothing to release Monday, and this weekend in an email told NBC Bay Area that the department is "continuing to investigate whether anyone else was involved."
 
Police are still not revealing how 66-year-old Kumra  died, though they did say that he and his ex-wife, Harinder "Rani" Kumra, who was in the home with him at the time, were tied up and beaten about 1:30 a.m. on Nov. 30.
 
Kumra’s death was Monte Sereno's first homicide in 40 years.
 
Rani Kumra, who her family said was reconciling with her ex-husband, told police that "three or four" suspects had entered their sprawling Monte Sereno complex on Withey Road and killed her husband, while she was able to escape. She provided enough detail for a sketch of one suspect, who she described as a skinny Latino man in his 20s.
 
These three arrests come on the heels of a Dec. 19 arrest of Raven Chanel Dixon, 22, of Alameda. Her arrest also raises questions. She was charged with prostitution, furnishing a controlled substance being an "accessory after the fact" in connection to Kumra's death. She also was charged with a gang-enhancement, which Santa Clara County prosecutors declined to discuss. The documents in her case are sealed.
 
Dixon's bail was set at $1 million and she is still in custody at the Elmwood Correctional Facility in Milpitas. Her attorney, John Ambrosio, told NBC Bay Area that he’s seen no evidence to connect her to Kumra’s death or to the charge of accessory to murder. On Saturday night, Ambrosio told NBC Bay Area that he had no idea who the trio of men were and hoped that their arrests would lead to the release of his client.

 
Anyone with information about this case is asked to contact Sgt. Mike D'Antonio of the Los Gatos-Monte Sereno Police Department at 408-827-3219. Contact police communications at 408-354-6843 during non-business hours.

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