A preliminary hearing was set Monday for a man accused of fatally stabbing two people in Denver last year, one on an RTD bus and another on a sidewalk near Regis University. Denver police called the attacks “random and unprovoked.”

The two murders happened within four-and-a-half hours of one another on the morning of Sept. 14, 2023.

Vinchenzo Moscoso, 30, stood silently and showed no emotion in Denver District Court as Judge Deborah Eyler set his preliminary hearing for March 22.

At that time, prosecutors will present evidence to the judge, who will decide whether there is enough to send the defendant to trial. 

He is being held on $5 million bail in connection with the stabbing deaths of 51-year-old Fidel Banuelos Sanchez and Judy Corcoran, 83.

The incidents began just after 5 a.m. that day, when police responded to a reported stabbing in an RTD bus in the 3200 block of North Federal Boulevard, according to Moscoso’s arrest affidavit. Sanchez, who was headed home from an overnight work shift according to his brother, was found dead on the bus with stab wounds to the neck.

The suspect boarded the bus and bought a $6 day pass, according to the bus driver. He then walked to the back of the bus and “the next thing she knew” people were yelling for her to stop the vehicle and call 911.

The suspect had “immediately, without provocation or warning began stabbing the victim in the left side of his neck, with an object in his right hand,” according to witnesses cited in the arrest warrant.

Hours later, officers responded to a second report of a fatal stabbing in the 5000 block of Federal Boulevard, near Regis University.

A witness saw Corchoran laying on the ground, bleeding. Moscoso stood nearby, according to the arrest document, his hands covered in blood and a bloody knife in his pocket.

Moscoso was on both parole and probation for prior cases in Jefferson County and Denver.

Before the alleged knife attacks, he had at least 14 cases filed against him since 2012, according to court records.

In March 2019, Lakewood police arrested him, along with another man, for robbing a Subway at 890 Wadsworth Boulevard at gunpoint. The two made off with $121.23 in cash, including dollars and change from the tip jar. Moscoso was sentenced to four years in prison for aggravated robbery.

The case originally contained 12 charges including theft, tampering with evidence, menacing with a weapon, six counts of robbery and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, but eleven charges were dropped in a plea agreement.

On Feb. 11, 2022, Denver police arrested him for breaking the windows and kicking the front door of a home at 52nd and North Shoshone Street, according to court records.

The case was originally a felony charge but was pleaded down to a misdemeanor. He was put on two years of probation.

He later had a DUI in the summer of 2022 for which he was sentenced to 48 hours of community service, records show. He was initially sentenced to a year in jail and two years probation, but the sentence was suspended. Both 2022 cases were resolved in September of that year.

Deputy District Attorney Daniel DeCecco told Judge Eyler that he would likely call two detectives to testify at Moscoso’s preliminary hearing in March.