A 59-year-old Van Nuys man was sentenced Tuesday, June 16, to 56 years to life in state prison for stabbing to death his stepfather outside his Lawndale home on the Fourth of July in 2018, authorities said.
Robert Schneider was convicted by jury in March of first-degree murder for the slaying of 74-year-old Steven Waite, court records show.
In a trial brief submitted before the March trial, prosecutors said a neighbor who lived across the street from Waite was walking out with his trash cans when he saw Schneider with a “black Rambo-style” knife stab Waite, then walk away. The neighbor followed Schneider after telling his wife to call 911.
Two other neighbors told deputies they were playing ping-pong in their yard when they heard someone yelling, according to the trial brief, “Someone is dying in the driveway!”; that was followed by a man’s voice yelling, “I’m going to kill you, (expletive)!”
Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies arrived to find Waite with stab wounds lying in his driveway in the 4000 block of West 159th Street, near Prairie Avenue, authorities said. He was stabbed eight times, with four of those wounds deemed fatal by the medical examiner’s office.
The neighbor who followed Schneider flagged down deputies near 159th and Manhattan Beach Boulevard and deputies noticed Schneider’s hands were covered in blood, prosecutors wrote.
Inside a backpack that belonged to Schneider, detectives found a receipt from a Big 5 Sporting Goods store showing the purchase of a fixed-blade knife, prosecutors wrote. Detectives went to the store and found video showing Schneider purchasing the knife about an hour before the attack.
No clear motive for the attack ever surfaced, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
Schneider was previously convicted of second-degree robbery in 2017 and was on probation at the time of the murder.