The suspect responsible for the assault of a Benicia Safeway manager and death of a Suisun City woman last year has pled no contest to his charges.
Christine Joens was banking at her local Wells Fargo on Tennessee Street in Vallejo on Feb. 2, 2016 when a man struck her from behind. The man, 2015 Benicia High School graduate William David King, continued to hit Jones as the Safeway manager was covering herself on the ground. Joens pushed her money to King, and he took it, but he kept hitting Joens on the head with a hammer. During the ordeal, she tried to protect her head with her cellphone. Joens suffered severe injuries from the assault, but survived the incident. To help with medical costs, Joens’ employees at the Benicia Safeway raised funds for her, and a GoFundMe campaign was also started by a friend of Joens. When last reported in February, both campaigns combined had raised more than $10,000.
According to a news release, Joens and several witnesses had delivered testimony at a preliminary hearing earlier in the year.
During the next day on Feb. 3, King again assaulted another woman. This woman, Suisun City resident Cheryl Sherwood, was shopping at the Macy’s in Fairfield’s Solano Town Center. After Sherwood exited the department store and approached her car, King– who had been waiting for her– came up and attacked Sherwood with a baseball bat. Sherwood, an oncology nurse at Kaiser Permanente in Walnut Creek, suffered several skull fractures and contusions to her shoulders, abdomen, knee and wrist. She died of her injuries a few days later on Feb. 5.
King admitted his involvement in both attacks after a police investigation led officers to him. Fairfield Police Detective David Neal and Vallejo Police Detective Mat Mustard were the lead investigators on the case. King will serve a determinate term of 10 years in prison.
Consecutive to the determinate term, King will also serve a life sentence for the attempted premeditated murder of Joens and consecutive to that indeterminate sentence, King will serve life without the possibility of parole for the state prison. King could have faced the death penalty, but after the Vallejo and Fairfield police departments met with the loved ones of Joens and Sherwood, authorities considered their input and the People agreed to not seek the death penalty. King is scheduled to be sentenced on Aug. 17 in the Solano County Superior Court.
“Unfortunately, no punishment will erase the damage that this defendant has done,” Solano County District Attorney Krishna Abrams said in a statement. “However, if we can provide some sense of closure for both of these families and ensure our community that this defendant will never be able to harm another innocent person in his lifetime, it is our belief that justice will have been served.”
The case was prosecuted by Abrams ,while Jeff Lelea provided victim advocacy.

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