An ex-convict accused of gunning down three homeless men in Los Angeles and robbing and killing a county employee in San Dimas has pleaded not guilty to charges laid out in a newly unsealed grand jury indictment. Jerrid Joseph Powell entered his plea after prosecutors bypassed a preliminary hearing entirely, moving the case straight toward trial following a judge's determination that he is mentally competent to stand trial.
Grand Jury Indictment Fast-Tracks the Case
The indictment, dated May 28 and unsealed on Wednesday, allows the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office to skip the standard preliminary hearing process, according to the San Gabriel Valley Tribune. That legal maneuver became possible only after an August 25 court ruling found Powell competent to stand trial, as detailed by Los Angeles Patch. Powell now faces four counts of murder, one count of residential robbery, and one count of being a felon carrying a concealed firearm, with allegations that he personally used a handgun during the crimes. He was ordered held without bail and is due back in court October 19 for a pretrial hearing.
The murder charges carry special circumstance allegations of multiple murders and murder during a robbery, exposure that eliminates the possibility of parole if Powell is convicted. Per Fox 11 Los Angeles, Powell's record already includes a 2015 felony assault conviction out of San Bernardino County, adding to the weight of his potential sentence. The case has stalled before: in January 2024, Powell refused to leave his jail cell for a scheduled arraignment, forcing Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Kimberley Baker Guillemet to delay the hearing, the outlet's report notes.
Four Killings in Four Days
The crimes at the center of the indictment span four days in late November 2023, beginning with the killing of 62-year-old Mark Diggs, who died of a gunshot wound to the head on the 800 block of West 110th Street near Westmont around 3 a.m. on November 26. The next morning, around 5 a.m. on November 27, 37-year-old Jose Bolanos was killed by a gunshot wound to the head on the 600 block of Mateo Street near downtown Los Angeles. A third homeless man, 52-year-old Shawn Alvarez, was killed by multiple gunshot wounds near South Avenue 18 and South Pasadena Avenue in Lincoln Heights around 2:30 a.m. on November 29.
Then-LAPD Chief Michel Moore said that in each of the three killings, the gunman approached solitary victims who were sleeping or preparing to sleep on sidewalks or in alleys and shot them without any prior interaction or provocation, according to the Los Angeles Times. Moore said investigators gathered physical evidence and video images that helped identify a possible lone male suspect and vehicle. LAPD forensics specialists later matched shell casings from all three unhoused shooting scenes to the handgun recovered inside Powell's vehicle at the time of his arrest, according to a statement from the LAPD.
A Targeted Follow-Home Robbery in San Dimas
The fourth victim, 42-year-old Nicholas Simbolon, was killed on November 28, 2023, inside his Tesla in the garage of his San Dimas home on the 1800 block of Hawkbrook Drive. Paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene from a gunshot wound to the head. Surveillance video indicated Simbolon had apparently been followed roughly 12 miles from an electric-vehicle charging station in the 200 block of South Citrus Street in West Covina, as reported by the Sierra Sun Times. Unspecified items were stolen from Simbolon during the robbery.
Simbolon worked as a project manager in the Los Angeles County Chief Executive Office, where he developed software applications supporting county agency operations and public service delivery, according to the Los Angeles Blade. He was a married father of two young sons. Investigators have said Powell and Simbolon had no known relationship, and the four killings themselves had no known connection to one another beyond the same suspect and weapon.
License Plate Reader Cracked the Case
The bridge between the two crime patterns turned out to be automated technology. After Simbolon's vehicle of interest was believed connected to the crime, its license plate was entered into an automatic reader system, which led investigators to a 2024 gray BMW 440i near Santa Monica Boulevard and Rexford Drive in Beverly Hills. Beverly Hills police pulled over the driver and made an arrest on November 30, 2023, in what Fox News described as a stop credited with potentially stopping a continuing killing spree. The gun found in Powell's vehicle is believed to be the weapon used to kill Simbolon, and it was the same handgun ballistics matched to the three unhoused shooting scenes.
Both then-LAPD Chief Michel Moore and Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna announced that Powell had been tied to the fatal shootings of the three homeless men. Powell was initially arrested in connection with Simbolon's killing before investigators linked his vehicle and weapon to the other three homicides.
Unhoused Homicides in Broader Context
The 2023 killings came during a year when overall homicides of unhoused individuals in Los Angeles had actually fallen, with 51 recorded through late November 2023, down from more than 90 in each of the two prior years, according to Crosstown LA. More broadly, LAPD records show at least 278 unhoused individuals were shot and killed in Los Angeles between 2015 and 2026, and the department's clearance rate for these homicides rose to 100% in 2025, up from just 48% in 2023, per LAist.
With the indictment now unsealed and Powell found competent to stand trial, the case moves toward its next hearing on October 19 without the public airing of evidence a preliminary hearing would have provided. That means the fuller picture of the prosecution's case against Powell will likely first emerge in open court at trial.
