Curtis Lind

Curtis Lind was an octogenarian landlord in Vallejo, California, who rented lot space to members of the Zizian group living in box trucks and vans, and who became the central surviving witness in the criminal cases against them before he was killed in January 2025. Lind survived a 2022 attack in which he was impaled with a sword and lost an eye, killing one of his assailants in self-defense, and was stabbed to death two and a half years later shortly before he was scheduled to testify.¹²

The 2022 Attack

By autumn 2022 Jack LaSota and several followers were living in vehicles on Lind's property on Lemon Street in Vallejo. Lind had gone to court to evict the tenants for nonpayment of rent, and on November 15, 2022, two days before the eviction deadline, the dispute escalated into violence: members attacked Lind with a sword, impaling him and costing him his right eye. Lind drew a handgun and shot and killed Emma Borhanian, a longtime LaSota associate, surviving the attack. Alexander Leatham, who used the name "Somni," and Suri Dao were charged with Borhanian's murder and the attempted murder of Lind.¹³

Lind's injuries were extensive enough to require about a month of hospitalization, with roughly fifty puncture wounds, a sword wound through his chest, facial lacerations, and the loss of the eye. Investigators concluded he had acted in self-defense in killing Borhanian and brought no charges against him for it. The case against his attackers rested heavily on his testimony, since prosecutors said it lacked surveillance footage, ballistics, or social-media evidence, which left the elderly survivor as the sole eyewitness when the matter headed toward an April 2025 trial.¹³

The 2025 Killing

On January 17, 2025, Lind was stabbed and his throat was cut on his Lemon Street property near the site of the 2022 attack, shortly before he was due to testify against the members charged in that case. Solano County prosecutors charged Maximilian Snyder, a former University of Oxford student connected to the group, with Lind's murder, alleging the killing was carried out to prevent his testimony. Lind's killing came three days before the Zizian-linked shooting of Border Patrol agent David Maland in Vermont.²⁴

The Solano County complaint charged the killing with a special circumstance, alleging that "the victim, C.L., was a witness to a crime" and "was intentionally killed for the purpose of preventing his testimony in a criminal proceeding," an allegation that exposes Snyder to a possible death sentence under California law. Snyder was arrested on January 24, 2025 by Redding Police Department officers and taken to the Solano County Jail in Fairfield, where he was held without bail. With Lind dead, the prosecution of his 2022 attackers lost the witness on whom it had depended, and the timing, days before the Vermont stop, became one of the first threads investigators used to connect the California and Vermont cases.²⁵