Suspect in south Sacramento stabbing death identified as transient with history of sex crimes

Sacramento County Sheriff’s deputies have identified the man they say brutally stabbed and killed an 18-year-old man outside a south Sacramento ATM last week, but offered few new clues to why it happened.

Police say Roosevelt Hardley, 64, a transient known to local authorities, was arrested for the stabbing of a teen in the 7000 block of Stockton Boulevard near Florin Road. According to jail records, Hardley was booked into the Sacramento County Main Jail, where he faces charges of murder and assault with a deadly weapon.

Police received a report of a stabbing in the Wells Fargo Bank parking lot around 10 p.m. Thursday, said Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office Spokeswoman Sgt. Tess Deterding. When deputies arrived, they found a man and woman who had both been stabbed. The man later died from his wounds at a hospital; the woman’s stab wound to her lower body was not life threatening, Deterding said.

Relatives told The Sacramento Bee on Saturday that the fatal victim was Joshua Thavisack, who graduated from Hiram Johnson High School last year. In a GoFundMe post to raise money to cover the cost of Thavisack’s funeral, one of his sisters described him going to deposit money into a local bank after work. He got into an argument with the man wielding a kitchen knife in the parking lot. The post describes Joshua Thavisack getting stabbed over and over as he tried to escape to his car.

The woman who was stabbed was one of Thavisack’s aunts, his family members say. Meanwhile, Hardley waited in the parking lot for deputies to arrive, the fundraising page says.

Cindy Thavisack told The Bee that the family is struggling to cope with her nephew’s senseless death so soon after her brother’s.

“It’s been really, really hard,” she said.

Hardley was convicted of multiple counts of rape by force and lewd and lascivious acts with a child under 14 in 1990, and served 13 years in prison, according to the Department of Justice.

Detectives ask that anyone with information regarding the crime contact the sheriff’s office at 916-874-5115 or Sacramento Valley Crime Stoppers at 916-443-4357.