Man charged after body found in shopping cart outside grocery store, CA officials say

A man has been charged in the death of a 61-year-old whose body was found in a shopping cart outside a California grocery store, officials said.

Daniel Niles was found wrapped in a sheet of plastic inside a cart near the front of a FoodMaxx grocery store in Chico shortly after 4 p.m. Sunday, March 12, police said, McClatchy News previously reported.

A 48-year-old man is charged with murder in Niles’ death and with the attempted murder of a 28-year-old woman, the Butte County District Attorney’s Office said in a March 20 news release. The two cases are believed to be connected, as the man, the woman and Niles were “homeless together in the area.”

McClatchy News is not naming the man as the district attorney’s office said criminal proceedings in the case have been suspended “pending a psychologist’s report” on his “ability to stand trial.”

A woman called police on March 12 after she came home to find a “strange truck parked in her driveway” and the man strangling a woman on the ground, the district attorney’s office said. The woman told police her neighbor was hitting the man with a baseball bat to try and get him off the woman.

Officers arrived to find the neighbor still trying to stop the man from strangling the woman, “who was turning blue,” prosecutors said. They restrained the man, who was taken to a hospital for a broken shoulder blade before being booked into jail.

The district attorney’s office said the woman was taken to a hospital, where she stayed for three days until her condition improved.

Following the man’s arrest, officers learned the truck parked in the driveway belonged to Niles, prosecutors said.

Officers took the truck into custody for “forensic processing,” after finding “a good deal of blood” in the truck’s camper, according to the district attorney’s office. They also found Niles’ dog, Tank, in the truck, and he was taken to a pound.

Later that day “across town,” a security guard at FoodMaxx called 911 after looking inside a “white tarp in the cart just a few feet from the FoodMaxx front entrance” and seeing a body, the district attorney’s office said.

The body was later identified as Niles, who died from “several traumatic blunt-force head wounds,” prosecutors said.

Store employees told police the cart “had been there for a few days,” according to the district attorney’s office.

Prosecutors said when detectives “asked for the store’s video surveillance,” its corporate office refused.

Save Mart Supermarkets, which owns FoodMaxx, did not immediately return McClatchy News’ request for comment on March 21.

After getting the videos through a search warrant, “a man matching (the suspect’s) description” was seen on the videos “rolling the cart” with a “large object” wrapped in a tarp into the store with Tank following on Friday, March 10, prosecutors said.

The man abandoned the cart “near the store’s bathrooms” and left the store with Tank, according to the district attorney’s office.

Later that morning, an employee rolled the cart outside the store, the video showed, prosecutors said. For the following two days, the cart remained “a few feet from the front entrance,” only being moved one time to clear the way for a customer in a wheelchair.

The man was scheduled to be arraigned on the murder charge March 20, but the district attorney’s office expected a delay “to determine (his) competency to stand trial.”

A psychologist’s report is due April 20

The district attorney’s office said the man could potentially face two lifetime prison sentences if convicted on both charges.

Chico is about 90 miles north of Sacramento.

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