Neighbors say the suspect, Malcolm Pope, had acted erratically in the past and seemed to have a confrontational relationship with his mother, reports NBC 7’s Shelby Bremer.
Neighbors say they long feared a man accused of killing a woman inside a Vista home, sparking an hourslong SWAT standoff in the 700 block of North Citrus Avenue on Wednesday.
Malcolm Pope, 26, appeared before a judge for the first time Friday, charged with murder. He pleaded not guilty in a hearing that lasted just minutes. The judge ordered him to continue to be held without bail.
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WATCH HEREThe criminal complaint against Pope alleges he killed Mireya Pope with a knife sometime between April 22 and April 23. Neighbors said Mireya Pope was Malcolm Pope’s mother and that they suspected for years he had been abusing her.
“We would hear her scream at night, like a couple of times throughout the night, and it would stop. And then again at night, she would scream again, so I feel like he was torturing her at night when nobody was awake,” said one man who lived next door and asked not to be identified.
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SIGN UP The neighbor said Malcolm Pope often behaved erratically – owning weapons like machetes, showing off Nazi paraphernalia, threatening them and even attempting to enter their home in the night.
“He would always be weird, like he would always yell that the demon’s going to get us, like the devil’s going to kill us, and he's with the devil and that he prays to the devil,” the neighbor said.
For several days leading up to Wednesday, the neighbors said they heard nearly constant screaming from the house, until it abruptly stopped.
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At around 10 a.m. Wednesday, they said Mireya Pope’s daughter showed up to the house with police for a welfare check after she told them her mother hadn’t responded to calls or texts, or shown up for work for two days.
The San Diego County Sheriff’s Office said deputies entered the home and found the woman dead with what they called “obvious signs of trauma.”
Deputies then swept the home and found Malcolm Pope had barricaded himself inside a bedroom, authorities said. A SWAT team and crisis negotiators were called in and Pope was taken into custody around 5 p.m., brought outside in handcuffs and draped in a flag about seven hours after that welfare check began.
Neighbors said it was not the first time police had been called to the home, adding that they felt he terrorized the neighborhood.
“I was really scared, and my parents, my family, everybody was scared of him,” the neighbor said. “Late at night, like at 12 or 1 a.m., he would come outside of his house, he would stand in the driveway, the porch. And it would be weird because he would just stare at you, smile like a grin, a creepy one. And he would just tilt his head to the side and just stare you down.”
Malcolm Pope was next scheduled to appear in court on May 5.
