Surveillance photographs connected an overnight search to Cole Klemke, who ultimately pleaded guilty and received a 10-year state prison sentence.
SAN DIEGO, Calif. — Images captured around a Mira Mesa shopping center and tips from members of the public helped San Diego police identify Cole Klemke within a day of a 2024 attack on a pregnant woman, beginning a case that ended two years later with an attempted-murder plea and a 10-year prison sentence.
The investigation provides a clear chain between evidence gathered immediately after the attack and the eventual conviction. Detectives obtained photographs and video of a man inside the Target near the crime scene shortly before the woman was stabbed at a nearby drive-thru ATM. Police circulated images while asking for help identifying him. Several people responded, the San Diego Police Department said, and Detective Kate Brooker later testified that a tipster recognized Klemke from the surveillance photographs. Officers arrested him the next afternoon. The identification became an important part of the prosecution that eventually led to Klemke admitting attempted murder.
The police department announced Klemke’s arrest on June 16, 2024, one day after the assault. At the time, police identified him as a 27-year-old Carmel Valley resident and said Northeastern Division detectives had secured images and video showing the suspect in Target before the crime. The department credited community tips with helping investigators put a name to the images. Other reporting placed the arrest at about 2:30 p.m. that Sunday. Police then referred further questions about prosecution to the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office, shifting the case from the search for a suspect to the court process.
The evidence trail had begun hours earlier with an ordinary stop at an ATM. At about 10 a.m. June 15, a 25-year-old woman who was four months pregnant drove to the machine near the Target store on Mira Mesa Boulevard. She got out of her vehicle because she needed to reach the ATM. Prosecutors later alleged that Klemke watched her from across the parking lot for about a minute. He approached from behind after she had withdrawn money. Police said she was wounded in the neck, chin and shoulder, while later testimony described injuries to her face and neck. Nothing publicly released indicated that the two had met before that morning.
The woman’s resistance was a critical part of how the assault ended. Preliminary-hearing testimony said the initial attack knocked her to the ground, where Klemke punched her and tried to stab her more times. Prosecutors said she kicked him and was able to drive him away. Early reports said bystanders also came to her aid after he fled. Emergency responders took the woman to a hospital. Despite the seriousness of the assault, police described the wounds as non-life-threatening, and she was released later that day. That description concerned her immediate medical condition; it did not mean the attack left no lasting injuries.
Investigators also focused on what apparently did not happen. Police said Klemke made no demand before or during the assault, took no property and did not have a meaningful exchange with the woman. Sgt. Erich Drilling, who reviewed footage, said after the attack that it appeared the woman had no warning that Klemke was behind her. Authorities described the incident at the time as apparently random. They did not publicly establish a motive, and reports surrounding the guilty plea and sentencing in 2026 still did not identify one. The absence of a publicly stated motive remained separate from the evidence establishing who carried out the assault.
The first court hearing broadened the case beyond the images used to identify Klemke. At his June 20, 2024, arraignment, he pleaded not guilty to charges that included attempted murder, mayhem and robbery in connection with the ATM assault. Prosecutor Spencer Sharpe described the attack as planned and unprovoked and alleged that Klemke had watched the woman before approaching her. Klemke was held without bail at that point. The filing of charges reflected prosecutors’ allegations, not a finding of guilt, and the case would remain unresolved for about two more years before Klemke changed his plea.
Prosecutors also disclosed at the arraignment that another alleged knife-related incident had already drawn police attention earlier in June. Sharpe said Klemke was accused of confronting a driver on June 1, standing in front of the man’s vehicle, damaging its hood with a knife and demanding that the driver get out. The man drove away. Klemke had been arrested in connection with that incident, but prosecutors said the matter was still under review when the ATM stabbing occurred two weeks later. Those allegations added procedural context to why other charges appeared in the 2024 case, but authorities did not identify the earlier encounter as a motive for the attack on the pregnant woman.
By 2026, the ATM prosecution had reached a preliminary hearing, where the state presented more detailed testimony about both the assault and the identification process. Brooker described how the surveillance photographs were distributed and how a tip led investigators to Klemke. Testimony also described the woman being knocked down, punched and subjected to further attempts to stab her before she fought back. The hearing moved the prosecution toward trial, but the case was resolved without one. On July 10, 2026, Klemke pleaded guilty to attempted murder. Reports at the time said he was expected to receive 10 years in state prison the next month.
The August sentencing brought the survivor’s experience into the public record more fully than the investigation had. She did not attend the hearing in person but gave a remote statement describing what happened after the attacker ran away. She recalled getting into her vehicle and trying to stop bleeding from several wounds before emergency help arrived. She told the court that physical scars and nerve damage remained more than two years later. She also described a long period of fear in which she could not comfortably go into public alone and remained wary of strangers. Her identity has not been made public in the reports reviewed for this story.
The 10-year sentence imposed Aug. 11 completed the central sequence that began with anonymous surveillance images: police collected video, released photographs, received information from residents, arrested Klemke, and prosecutors eventually secured his guilty plea. That sequence explains how investigators identified the attacker, but it does not answer every question about the crime. Most notably, authorities still have not publicly explained why the woman was targeted. Public reporting also does not establish that property was taken during the attack, despite robbery having appeared among the initial charges.
For now, Klemke remains subject to the 10-year state prison sentence for attempted murder. No later public development located through Sept. 22 alters that disposition. The victim’s sentencing statement, meanwhile, underscored that the legal case reached an endpoint long after her own recovery began, with the effects she described continuing beyond Klemke’s arrest, plea and sentencing.
Author note: Last updated September 22, 2026.