A California man was charged with murder Thursday in the stabbing death of a beloved Burbank 1st-grade teacher earlier this week.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office is charging Sergio Fraire with murder, with a special circumstance of lying in wait, for allegedly attacking and killing Arti Varma in a Burbank, CA home early Monday morning.
Arti’s daughter -- identified by neighbors as 25-year-old mental health activist Meera Varma -- was also stabbed in the attack ... she was hospitalized in critical but stable condition.
On top of the murder charge, Fraire has also been hit with one felony count of attempted murder and one felony count of first-degree residential burglary.
8:35 AM PT -- Burbank Police just announced a suspect was arrested Monday night … 30-year-old Sergio Fraire was taken into custody by a SWAT team serving a search warrant. Police say evidence related to the stabbings was recovered at the residence where he was detained. Fraire had been identified as a person of interest by investigators earlier Monday.
He was booked for murder and attempted murder. Police were working to determine a motive for the crime and the relationship between the suspect and the victims. The residence where Fraire was detained is about 2.5 miles from the scene of the crime.
Meera was listed in stable condition Tuesday morning.
A first-grade teacher in California has been killed and her daughter was critically injured in a stabbing early Monday morning ... and police are still looking for the suspect.
Burbank Police say officers got a call around 6 AM about a stabbing in a single-family home ... and found two women had been attacked at the scene.
Police later identified 59-year-old Arti Varma as the woman who was killed ... neighbors told news outlets her 25-year-old daughter Meera is the other victim.
BPD said they were taken to a nearby hospital, where one woman died from her injuries and the other remains hospitalized.
