Mark Mechikoff
After a conservatorship was established for the man accused of stabbing a woman and posting a Facebook video of the victim covered in blood, the San Mateo County Conservatorship Office found him competent to stand trial, San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said.
The suspect, Mark Mechikoff, 39, of Pacifica, is alleged to have stabbed Claribel Estrella to death on her kitchen floor and posted a Facebook video of her still alive and covered in blood.
Mechikoff was found not competent to stand trial last year by court-appointed doctors, a finding that was reaffirmed at the Napa State Hospital, where doctors found that treatment and medication were unlikely to return him to a state of competency that would make him eligible for trial, Wagstaffe said.
In a rare turn of events — the first during Wagstaffe’s tenure, he said — the conservatorship office has disputed the previous incompetency finding and is claiming he is competent to stand trial. His defense will now choose whether to dispute that or move forward with a trial.
After Mechikoff’s alleged post of the killing, a woman saw the video while in Florida and called a Sheriff’s Office in Nevada to report the crime because it was the last place she knew Mechikoff lived.
From there, that Sheriff’s Office pinpointed the Facebook posting to the Bay Area and reached out to the San Mateo Police Department. San Mateo police conducted a search of the apartment complex on the 200 block of 37th Avenue. After the door-to-door search, officers found Estrella dead on the kitchen floor. Mechikoff was found and arrested a few hours later in San Jose, according to the DA’s Office.
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