GOLDEN, Colo. – The man arrested last week and accused of stabbing his live-in girlfriend to death in Wheat Ridge was charged Monday with first-degree murder after deliberation and two violent crime sentence enhancers.
Joshua Kamuela Akuila Kane, 31, is being held without bond after his court appearance. He was arrested July 30 after being released from an area hospital.
According to an affidavit for Kane’s arrest, he called police around 2:20 p.m. on July 29 to report that his girlfriend was dead and that he was injured and covered in blood.
When officers arrived to the home in the 8700 block of W. 46th Ave. that afternoon, Kane was at the top of the home’s stairs and said he couldn’t move. The officer who wrote the affidavit said police found blood all over the home and that the victim was discovered dead inside a bathroom upstairs.
The woman, whom Denver7 is not identifying because she is a victim of domestic violence, had been cut on her neck and stomach, the affidavit says. A subsequent autopsy found the stomach wound caused her death.
The affidavit says that Kane didn’t remember much of what had happened because he was very intoxicated. Kane told officers that he and the woman had been arguing the night before after Kane had been drinking.
The woman went for a walk, during which time Kane drank more, and after she got home she went to sleep and forced Kane to sleep outside of the room, according to the affidavit.
Kane claimed he didn’t remember anything that apparently happened after that until he woke up bleeding and unable to walk, according to the affidavit. That’s when he went upstairs and found his girlfriend dead, then called his mother and 911, police said.
Kane was taken to the hospital for renal failure because he had lost blood due to a deep cut on his arm.
A friend of the woman’s who was interviewed by police said she had spoken with the woman while she was out on the walk and said the woman told her Kane was “acting insane and making her uncomfortable” before she left the house.
The friend told police the woman had been complaining about Kane for about a month and that she’d been trying to leave him. The affidavit says that after speaking with the victim that night, her friend never heard from the woman again.
The affidavit says that when Kane was interviewed at the hospital prior to him being taken to jail, while he continued to claim he didn’t remember what happened that he nodded up and down when police told him he’d stabbed his girlfriend and himself.
Kane’s next court appearance is scheduled for Oct. 2.
