OAKLAND — A Bay Area man suspected of aiding fellow gang members to murder a woman in order to prevent her from telling police what she knew about a triple homicide in Richmond has been offered a plea deal: admit to witness tampering, and get out of jail immediately. On April 10, 23-year-old Matias Mendoza-Mendoza accepted the deal, pleading no contest to a single count of dissuading a witness from testifying, a felony, with the expectation that prosecutors dismiss murder charges and move to sentence him to two years probation and one day in jail. Mendoza-Mendoza is set to go before Judge Morris Jacobson on June 13 for sentencing.
Mendoza-Mendoza was released from jail later that day, under what is known as a Cruz Waiver, court records show. It is a legal term that allows defendants to be out of custody before they’re formally sentenced, with the understanding that if they’re implicated in criminal activity during the interim period they can face much stiffer consequences. Mendoza-Mendoza had been in jail since November 2021, when prosecutors charged him with murdering his , 31-year-old Carolina Carrillo-Mendoza, in a shooting in the Oakland Hills on Oct.
18 of that year. The motive was gang-related, and twofold, authorities say; Carillo-Mendoza had angered members of the SSL-502 Sureño gang by dating a rival Norteño member, but more importantly, to police with information that could implicate the gang in a June 2021 mass shooting at a Richmond party where three were killed and six others were wounded. At the April 10 hearing, Deputy District Attorney Greg Dolge — a longtime prosecutor in the office — cited “problems of proof” as the reason behind the seemingly lenient deal, explaining that Mendoza-Mendoza’s own words place him at the scene of the homicide, but added, “that’s about as far as we get.
” Court papers say that police believe at least two other gang members were present for the killing and that one of them, not Mendoza-Mendoza, personally killed Carrillo-Mendoza. But in an unexpected move, the Alameda County probation officer assigned to Mendoza-Mendoza’s case has urged Jacobson to reject the deal and sentence Mendoza-Mendoza to prison, arguing in a report that while Mendoza-Mendoza might not be the actual killer, there is ample evidence he helped lure Carrillo-Mendoza to her death. The report notes that while he admitted to being present for the shooting, Mendoza-Mendoza changed his story several times, and offered a questionable final version of events that the victim was shot while he was urinating in a bush with his back turned.
“It was a calculated and callous execution which required planning and/or maneuvering to get the victim to willingly come to the scene of her murder,” Deputy Probation Officer Lorena Gomez wrote in her report. “The defendant was key in that plan…a significant prison sentence is the only appropriate punishment. ” Gomez added that should Jacobson reject her recommendation for a prison term that he should sentence Mendoza-Mendoza to three years’ probation, not two.
The probation report says that in a recent interview with Gomez, Mendoza-Mendoza denied being in a gang, explaining he simply “liked the color blue” and didn’t know that members of his own family were affiliated with gangs. It says that he worked as a cook at the time of his arrest but in the six weeks since his release from jail, has struggled to find work and is relying on his brother for financial support. Carrillo-Medonza was shot between the eyes on the 7800 block of Redwood Road on the night of Oct.
18, 2021. The first major development in the investigation came when Mendoza-Mendoza’s Honda was identified as being present at the scene. Investigators say in a subsequent interview, Mendoza-Mendoza admitted to being an SSL-502 member during police questioning, describing Carrillo-Mendoza as an ex-girlfriend he hadn’t seen in months.
Eventually, though, he admitted he and the victim went to the Oakland hills to split a 24-pack of Modelos. Mendoza claimed he was urinating in a bush when she was shot by unknown assailants, and that he became scared and fled the area on foot after hearing shots, according to court documents. As the investigation progressed, police developed informants who told them that members of SSL-502 — a gang subset based in the East Bay — had become concerned Carrillo-Mendoza knew who was responsible for the June 20, 2021 Richmond house party shooting, where Andres Morales-Garcia, Rudy Godinez-Aguilar, and Hector Rigoberto Carrillo-Ruiz were all killed.
In March 2022, Enrique Ramirez-Calmo, 28, another alleged SSL-502 member, was arrested in connection with the triple homicide. He then allegedly offered up information about Carrillo-Mendoza’s killing, implicating another alleged gang member, 18-year-old Geovani Garcia-Jacinto, according to investigators. Ramirez-Calmo told police Garcia-Jacinto took the pistol from a man who hesitated and fired a shot between Carrillo-Mendoza’s eyes, an account later backed up by a confidential informant, according to authorities.
Garcia-Jacinto was 17 at the time. Alameda County prosecutors have not charged him with Carrillo-Mendoza’s killing, but the Contra Costa District Attorney has charged him with conspiracy and murder in connection with the Richmond mass shooting. Prosecutors allege that both Garcia-Jacinto and Ramirez-Calmo travelled to the Father’s Day party with the intent to murder rival M2-18 Norteños and that both men fired at the crowded party on the 2100 block of Dunn Avenue in Richmond, a block away from 23rd Street.
They allegedly returned to Oakland afterward, sold the car used in the shooting to a Pick-N-Pull two days later, but still possessed one of the homemade pistols a month after the shooting, authorities said. .
From: mercurynews
URL: https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/06/09/oakland-murder-suspect-pleads-to-one-day-in-jail-probation-in-killing-of-woman-who-knew-too-much-about-gangs-involvement-in-triple-homicide/
