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Indian store clerk killer found dead on death row
Glenn Wade Jennings was sentenced to death for the 2004 murder of Indian store clerk Kulwant Sufi.
Glenn Wade Jennings / California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation photo
SAN FRANCISCO, California — A man sentenced to death in 2010 for the murder of an Indian store clerk, died July 17 of natural causes.
Glenn Wade Jennings was serving his sentence in San Quentin state prison in California. According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, he was found unresponsive in his cell during a nighttime security check. Responding staff initiated lifesaving measures and summoned an ambulance. The Solano County coroner pronounced him dead at 3:18 am. Jennings was 71.
On June 2, 2004, Jennings walked into the DK Discount Liquor Store on Florin Road in South Sacramento and stabbed the store owner Kulwant Sufi with a steak knife before heading over to the cash register. he disguised himself with a Pittsburgh Steelers blanket so that the store’s security cameras could not capture him.
As Sufi tried to stop him, he stabbed her 10 more times before leaving the store with about $100. She bled out and was pronounced dead at the scene. Sufi was 61 at the time of her death. Chanan Sufi, Kulwant’s husband, briefly told this reporter in 2004: “My whole life is gone.” The couple had three grown children.
Police found a lot of evidence that tied Jennings to Sufi’s murder. Investigators found the store register in a vacant lot near Jennings' home. Fibers that matched the blanket were discovered in his car and forensic scientists lifted Sufi's DNA from his shirt. The steak knife(which was the murder weapon) matched a set of knives Jennings kept in his home.
Jennings was sentenced to death on Nov. 6, 2010. Even at his sentencing hearing, the condemned man continued to maintain he did not kill Sufi.
California still has the death penalty, but it has been in abeyance since 2006. California Governor Gavin Newsom put a moratorium on the death penalty in 2019. There are currently 650 prison inmates on Death Row in California; the majority are serving their sentences in San Quentin.
Jennings had a long rap sheet before his murder of Sufi. He was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole for first-degree robbery on Jan. 28, 1977, but released to parole supervision on April 29, 1980, less than three years later. He was next sentenced on Oct. 29, 1982, to serve 35 years for armed robbery, but released on parole in 2001. He finished his parole supervision on Feb. 24, 2004, and killed Sufi three months later.
Jennings’ defense lawyer Dwight Samuel told the court his client, who has spent nearly 30 straight years in prison and jail, functions pretty well behind bars. "In life, there is a spot or station for everybody, even if the spot has to be in a Level 4 prison," Samuel said outside court, as reported by The Sacramento Bee.
In prison, Jennings joined the San Quentin Death Row Artists and Writers Collaborative. One of his paintings was included in a 2016 exhibition in London.
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