Neighbors described a calm suspect, a familiar victim and a level of violence many said they had never seen on their street.
LAFAYETTE, Calif. — The killing of 34-year-old Christopher Jaber has shaken Lafayette, where violent crime is uncommon and residents say the sight of officers running with rifles through a residential block on March 21 felt almost unimaginable.
That local shock is part of why the case has drawn such intense attention. Prosecutors have charged 35-year-old David Swank Prince with murder and said the attack appears to have been targeted. Reports that a Facebook account bearing Prince’s name mentioned Jaber and his address before the killing added a second layer to the story, turning what might have remained a local homicide into a case about fear, warning signs and a community trying to understand what happened on an otherwise quiet cul-de-sac.
For neighbors, the story began with the scene itself. Christina Coleridge, who lives nearby, told Bay Area television stations she came home to police activity across the street and watched officers move quickly toward the property. She said Jaber lived in an accessory dwelling unit behind his parents’ house and was a familiar presence in the neighborhood. “He rides his bike out here sometimes,” Coleridge told NBC Bay Area. “He likes to talk to you.” In another interview, she described seeing the suspect in custody with plastic bags over his hands while police processed the scene. Those details gave residents a close-up view of a homicide investigation in a city where such scenes are unusual enough to become neighborhood memory almost immediately.
Officials say the formal timeline started at about 11:30 a.m. on March 21, when a relative of Jaber called 911 to report a suspicious person carrying a hatchet in the backyard and trying to enter the unit where Jaber lived. The Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office said Lafayette police arrived, found Jaber dead, and detained Prince a short distance away. Local reports said a neighbor’s camera also captured a man later identified as Prince in the area around that time. Authorities identified the victim as Jaber on March 23, and prosecutors announced the murder charge the next day. Public reporting later said the complaint included a deadly-weapon enhancement tied to a small hatchet.
Only after that initial shock did the online posts become a major part of the public conversation. Stations including KTVU and ABC7 reported that a Facebook account using Prince’s name had posted in February that Jaber, identified by full name and age, lived on Westminster Place and was “aka the eye.” A later comment from the same account asked, “Can someone please kill this man.” The posts were later deleted. Neighbors told reporters the language was chilling, but investigators have not publicly confirmed that Prince authored the messages, whether the posts were reported before the killing, or how they fit into the state’s theory of motive. That uncertainty has left residents with a strange mix of specifics and silence: unusually direct language circulating online, but few official answers about its origin or meaning.
The legal case is still in its early stages. Prosecutors charged Prince, 35, with murder and said the killing was a targeted act. The district attorney’s office said he was to appear in Martinez court on March 25, and later reporting said a continuance pushed the expected arraignment to April 2. The San Francisco Chronicle also reported that Prince had a prior felony assault conviction in Butte County that could affect sentencing if the current case results in a conviction. Depending on the final charges and any proved enhancements, the case could carry a long prison term. Still, the most important facts for now are the ones that remain unresolved: motive, prior contact between the men and the exact role of the social media evidence.
Because Lafayette is so often described in terms of safety and affluence, this case has also become a test of how a community explains violence when it does arrive. SFGATE reported that local records showed no homicides there from 2013 through at least 2025. ABC7 said police described the March 21 killing as the city’s first homicide in 20 years. Those statistics do not change the pain of one death, but they do explain why neighbors reacted with disbelief and why the story spread so quickly beyond the block where Jaber lived. Residents were not simply reacting to a criminal charge. They were reacting to a break in the city’s usual sense of order.
As of the latest public reports, Prince remained in custody and investigators were still trying to explain the connection between the victim, the suspect and the language that appeared online weeks before the killing. For Lafayette, the next milestone is not only the next court date, but the moment authorities answer the questions that residents have been asking since police arrived on Westminster Place.
Author note: Last updated April 18, 2026.