Judge orders Zizian murder defendant moved to medical facility, delaying confirmations

VALLEJO, Calif. (CN) — A Solano County Superior Court judge on Wednesday ordered a murder trial defendant tied to the anti-AI group the Zizians to be moved to a medical facility after repeated refusals to take medication left them confined to a wheelchair.

Superior Court Judge John Ellis granted Solano County Sheriff Brad DeWall’s request to move Suri Dao to the California Medical Facility in Vacaville after a few hearings to reschedule Dao and co-defendant Alexander Jeffrey Leatham’s trial confirmations.

Leatham, a transgender woman, and Dao are currently incarcerated at the Solano County jail and charged with aggravated mayhem and the 2022 attempted murder of Curtis Lind, their landlord at a Vallejo trailer park.

Leatham and Dao belong to a group informally titled the Zizians, a loose, cult-like organization of radical vegans and computer savants who claim AI is a danger to humanity. The group is currently implicated in six killings across the country.

In an attack, the right side of Lind’s skull was shattered, and his chest was impaled with a samurai sword. Lind shot and killed Zizian member Emma Borhanian and wounded Leatham. Both Leatham and Dao are charged with Borhanian’s murder.

Though he survived and was set to testify at Dao and Leatham’s trial, Lind was killed in January 2025. Another Zizian, Maximilian Snyder, is accused of the murder and is now awaiting trial.

Both suspects were in the courtroom on Wednesday, with Leatham uncharacteristically subdued with a mask over her mouth, unlike previous hearings, where she was prone to outbursts.

Ellis said the court wanted to monitor Dao’s condition at CMF for a week and scheduled another hearing for Dec. 16, instead of halting and not rescheduling the trial confirmations under further notice.

“If I suspend proceedings, we can’t take it back,” said Ellis.

Ellis said he suspected Dao’s medical status to be based on a refusal for treatment or a “personal problem” instead of a mental condition.

At a Dec. 1 hearing, Jordan Alarcon, a psychiatric registered nurse and the director of nursing at Wellpath, the jail’s medical provider, said Dao had lost 32 pounds since September due to “restrictive anorexia” and had an electrolyte imbalance. He said she developed a pressure ulcer on her hip and buttock area because she was “laying down in feces and urine” and refused to get up. Her condition, Alarcon said, could lead to cardiac arrhythmia, increased likelihood of stroke and death.

Dao’s attorney Brian Ford said a medical doctor’s report after examining Dao at CMF was necessary to make any conclusions about her current condition.

“I still think there is an urgent need for her to receive medical care,” he said.

Ilana Shapiro of the Solano County District Attorney’s Office asked Ford for the raw data from Dao’s previous medical reports after she and Ford had a closed-door meeting with Ellis in the judge’s chambers.

Dao and Leatham are two of roughly 10 known members of the Zizians — a group dedicated to the ideas of blogger Jack “Ziz” LaSota, a 34-year-old transgender woman who came to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2016.

A former aspiring tech worker, LaSota came to the tech-saturated region to study the dangers artificial intelligence could pose to humanity and developed a following among AI theorists and tech bloggers for her radical ideas on AI, veganism and gender.

In August 2022, LaSota faked her death and disappeared. She was arrested in Maryland in February on charges of trespassing and possession of a handgun in a vehicle.

Another member of the Zizians accused of killing a U.S. Border Patrol agent pleaded not guilty to murder and other charges. Prosecutors said they will seek the death penalty against her.

Dao and Leatham’s trial is tentatively set to start on March 3, 2026, at the Solano County Superior Courthouse in Fairfield.