A 45-year-old man who was banned from L.A. Metro trains for past violent acts was convicted Monday in the 2024 stabbing death of a woman on a B Line train who was on her way home from an overnight shift.
Elliot Tramel Nowden offered no reaction as the jury in downtown L.A. found him guilty of murder and robbery in the killing of Mirna Soza Arauz, 67, at the Universal City station in April 2024. Since the jury found Nowden killed Soza Arauz while committing a felony, he will face life in state prison without the possibility of parole when he is sentenced next month.
Soza Arauz was working nights as she saved up money to buy a home in her native Nicaragua. She was on her way home from a shift as a security guard at an Original Tommy’s hamburger restaurant in North Hills when Nowden approached her with two knives, stabbed her in the throat and stole her bag, authorities said.
Video from the scene showed Nowden board the train at the Universal City stop and ride it to the next and last station, North Hollywood, where Soza Arauz entered, according to L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. Alexander Bott, who tried the case. As the train returned to the Universal City stop, Nowden attacked with a pair of serrated kitchen knives, Bott said.
“This whole case is really sad. It’s so senseless,” said Bott, who said Nowden lacked a “moral compass.”
Bott said Nowden stole a bag on the victim’s shoulder. Nowden’s attorney declined to comment outside the courtroom. A spokeswoman for the L.A. County alternate public defender’s office, which represented Nowden, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In 2019, Nowden was arrested after stabbing a USC student in the chest on the Expo Line, according to testimony given by the victim in that incident at trial. The victim said Nowden approached him out of nowhere, cursed at him and referred to him by a racial slur before plunging a blade into his chest. Somehow, the victim was not seriously injured, Bott said.
Nowden was banned from L.A. Metro trains under the terms of a plea deal for assault in that case. A few weeks later, Nowden was again in court on assault charges, taking a second plea deal that sent him to state prison for four years, records show.
Nowden took the stand in his own defense at trial last week, according to Bott, who said the defendant admitted he had been homeless for years and used methamphetamine on a near daily basis.
Soza Arauz was maybe a year or two away from leaving the U.S. and moving back to Nicaragua, to the home that was halfway built by the time she died.
“She was very alone in [the U.S.]. Pretty alone, by herself until my brother got there,” her daughter, Mirna Roman Soza, previously told The Times. “What kept her going was her plans. Her dreams.”
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