An El Sobrante hardware store employee was fatally stabbed 17 times by a customer after he sought to report to police that the man had grabbed spray paint from the aisles and decorated his face in silver and black, the colors of the Oakland Raiders, prosecutors said Monday.

After he was arrested, Daymond Agnew told investigators that Allah told him to go to Oliver's Ace Hardware on Sunday morning to help people, and that he spray-painted his face because he felt that "the Raiders are favored by Allah," said Contra Costa County Deputy District Attorney Mary Knox.

Knox, who leads the homicide unit, spoke after the office charged Agnew, a 34-year-old Hercules resident, with murder and an enhancement for allegedly using a knife. He is being held at County Jail in Martinez in lieu of $1 million bail.

The trouble began at about 9 a.m. Sunday at the store on San Pablo Dam Road near Appian Way.

Knox said Agnew, believing he was "following Allah's direction," intervened in a conversation between a customer trying to pick paint colors and employee Daniel Joseph Stone. When Stone indicated that he was fine helping the customer himself, Agnew went to the back of the store and spray-painted his face, Knox said.

Stone "walked up rapidly" toward the front of the store and told co-workers, "Dial 911, dial 911" said store owner Richard Oliver.

That's when Agnew came up behind Stone, 51, and began stabbing him, authorities said.

"He decided he needed to stab him because he doesn't like the police," Knox said. Stone tried to run out the front door but fell, Knox said, and Agnew continued to stab him.

His clothes covered in blood, Agnew ran from the store, across a creek and, in a "bizarre twist," ended up in the backyard of the store's owner, Knox said. He scooped up Oliver's dog and went inside, where he was arrested after someone in the house called 911, the prosecutor said.

A bloody folding knife was found near him, she said.

Agnew's Facebook page, which has since been taken down, was filled with religious messages referring to his adherence to Islam as well as pictures of passages in the Quran.

He has previous convictions in Sacramento County for a weapons violation and fraudulent use of an access card, records show. Efforts to reach his family were not successful.

Stone, who had been a store employee for nine months, was taken to John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, where he was pronounced dead. Two of the 17 stab wounds proved to be fatal, authorities said.

Stone's relatives met with sheriff's chaplains Monday and declined to comment as they gathered at the Pinole home where he grew up.

Friends and co-workers described Stone as a good-natured man who doted on his grandchildren. He previously had a carpet-cleaning firm and has helped his mother with her home-cleaning business.

"He was always joking, always laughing, always had a smile," said co-worker Dennis James, 64, of Walnut Creek.

Oliver, whose grandfather John Oliver opened the store 70 years ago, said of the victim, "He was a great guy, and his life was tragically ended by a random act of violence. It's needless and senseless."

Pam Patzlaff, 62, a neighbor and store worker who recommended Stone for the job, said he was a "very happy-go-lucky guy. He had a very positive outlook on life. We lost a good friend, a good co-worker, a good neighbor.

The suspect, Patzlaff said, "attacked Danny unprovoked, from what I'm hearing."