Woman stabbed to death by roommate because she wouldn’t move out, Wichita police say
Police say a 44-year-old Wichita man stabbed his roommate to death over the weekend because she wouldn’t move out.
Wichita police Capt. Brent Allred said Jason Leigh McCaleb wanted 28-year-old Devin Cook to leave his home, in the 2400 block of South Washington, but she refused to go.
Police went to the address twice early Saturday morning — once after the roommates got into a verbal fight over McCaleb wanting Cook to move out and later when the argument turned physical.
Allred said officers who went to McCaleb’s home at 4:10 a.m. told him that they couldn’t make Cook leave because she had “established residency there.” They told him that if he wanted her gone, he had to use legal avenues like eviction or petitioning the court for a protective order, Allred said.
McCaleb had allowed Cook to live in his home for approximately a month. He called police initially because “he wanted her removed from that residence,” Allred said.
No one else lived there, Wichita police spokesman Officer Charley Davidson said.
“If they’ve been allowed to live there with clothing and keys and all that, we just cannot remove individuals. There’s processes for that,” Allred said, adding that officers determined “no crime had been committed on that initial call” to McCaleb’s address.
Officers left and returned to the address after a physical fight started. They arrested McCaleb as he was leaving the home. Cook was inside with several stab wounds.
She died at a Wichita hospital shortly before 7 a.m. Saturday, according to police records.
Allred said the investigation is ongoing and will be presented to the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office, which will decide whether to prosecute McCaleb and on what criminal charges. He was booked into the Sedgwick County Jail on Saturday afternoon on suspicion of first-degree intentional murder, online jail records show.
He is being held in lieu of $500,000 bond.
McCaleb and Cook were not in an intimate relationship, but the case is being treated as a domestic violence crime because the pair were living together, Allred said.
Cook’s death is the city’s 28th criminal homicide of the year. Criminal homicides don’t include police-involved, self-defense or accidental killings. It’s the 36th homicide overall.
This story was originally published November 25, 2019 at 11:26 AM.
