35-year-old Northern California man arrested in deadly stabbing in Lafayette, police say

LAFAYETTE, Calif. (KGO) -- The Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office and Lafayette Police Department are investigating a deadly stabbing in Lafayette.

The homicide happened Saturday at Westminster Place. Police arrived just after 11:30 a.m. They were responding to a call of a suspicious man inside a house.

That's around the same time Mark Sedley was returning home.

"All of sudden I see police cars coming from all over. There must have been 12 to 15 cars all together," says Sedley, who has lived in his house with his wife, Jane, for 50 years. He says he has never seen anything like this before. "Never! It's a wonderful neighborhood."

When officers arrived, they found a man who was deceased. He is not being identified at this time.

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The road is a small residential street with a cul-de-sac, just inside the eastern Lafayette city limits and south of state Highway 24.

Pictures taken by neighbors show the backyard with police makings. Some described hearing people arguing inside the house Saturday morning.

The Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office confirmed this was a homicide in a tweet.

"We saw someone get apprehended. From there on, quite a few more police showed up. One time maybe there was 15 different cars. Fire, ambulance, that sort of thing," explains Jesse Tippett, who lives close by.

On Saturday evening, police said a 35-year-old man from Chico was taken in for questioning, and was later arrested.

Neighbors say the house was owned by a couple who were both doctors. They live there with an adult son. Some witnesses described the suspect as blond man in his early 30s.

"I just saw that top of his head and a little bit of his body. And that he was holding his hands behind him. And was put in the police car and left pretty quickly," says Jane Sedley.

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Detectives from the Contra Costa Sheriff's Office homicide unit and the crime lab responded to the scene.

The investigation is ongoing.

Anyone with any information on this incident is asked to contact the Investigation Division at (925) 313-2600 or through Sheriff's Office dispatch at (925) 646-2441.

Bay City News contributed to this report