Tuesday afternoon, authorities announced the arrest of the man they say is responsible for the shooting death last July of 26-year-old Jermaine “Third” Davis of Berkeley.
In a statement released by the Berkeley Police Department on Tuesday afternoon, police said they have arrested Antiown Ramon York, 25, of Pittsburg on suspicion of murder in the Davis case.
The announcement took place as court proceedings against two other men charged with killing an 8-year-old girl to avenge Davis’ death began in Alameda County Superior Court. Berkeleyside will provide continuing coverage of that case throughout the week.
Authorities said Davis originally had been targeted in a 2009 gang-related shooting — related to a feud between members of Berkeley’s Waterfront gang and the North Side Oakland gang — that left his brother dead. Last April, a jury found four men guilty of murder in that shooting, of 25-year-old Charles Davis. They were sentenced to life in prison in July, just days before Jermaine Davis was shot down, on Derby Street near Martin Luther King Jr. Way in Berkeley.
York was arrested Jan. 6 in Daly City. Police said they worked with members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as the Daly City Police Department, to find York and take him into custody without incident at 3 p.m.
He remains in custody without bail at Berkeley Jail, and is scheduled for arraignment Wednesday, Jan. 8, at 2 p.m. in Department 112 at the Wiley W. Manuel Courthouse in downtown Oakland.
Jermaine Davis’ shooting took place shortly before 7 p.m. on July 17, 2013. Police received multiple reports of “shots fired,” with a victim down in the 1800 block of Derby Street.
Officers who arrived found Davis lying injured in the street. He was taken to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead.
According to police, detectives have been gathering evidence and pursuing leads since then. Police identified York as the suspect, and got a judge to issue a warrant for his arrest.
But street justice took a deadly toll before then, leading to a shooting in Oakland’s Dimond District that left 8-year-old Alaysha Carradine dead and three others, including and two other young children and their grandmother, wounded.
Authorities said in October, when they announced two arrests connected to the girl’s killing, that, after Davis was shot, “Friends, family, and associates of Davis quickly focused their attention on an adult male … who they believed killed Davis.”
Police identified two of those associates as Oakland residents Joseph Carroll Jr., 27, and Darnell Williams Jr., 22.
Carroll, said police, is the cousin of Jermaine Davis. (Carroll’s brother, 23-year-old Coleon Carroll, is currently in jail facing charges along with a second defendant for the shooting death of Gary Ferguson Jr. in Berkeley in 2010. The Carroll brothers have been reported by authorities to be ringleaders in the West Berkeley-based Waterfront gang.)
Police said Joseph Carroll and Darnell Williams — who was identified by police as a friend of Davis — and other unnamed coconspirators met up at a home in East Oakland on July 17, then “armed themselves with firearms.”
Police said the group then determined that York’s children and their mother lived in the 3400 block of Wilson Avenue in Oakland.
At 11:10 p.m., police said Williams rang the doorbell on Wilson. He waited outside and pointed a firearm at the door, according to authorities. As the children began to open the door, he fired numerous shots at them, then fled the area. Police said Williams later admitted to witnesses that he committed the shooting.
That same night, police said Carroll went to the home of York’s mother in Antioch, where he hid outside and waited for York. Carroll later confronted York at a gas station in Antioch; no further information about that interaction has been provided.
Police said Carroll, Williams and others “continued their attempts to locate and kill” York — whose name has not previously been released — after the shooting in Oakland.
According to people who knew him, Davis had turned away from the gang lifestyle in recent years and was focusing more on helping keep his family’s younger generation in line.
The court proceedings underway this week related to the Carradine killing also involve charges against Williams that, in an unrelated incident in Berkeley in September, he shot and killed 22-year-old Berkeley resident Anthony ‘Lil Tone’ Medearis III after the two got into a fight following a dice game at Eighth and Camelia streets. (Police also arrested a woman, Laquana Nuño, in the Medearis case, but proceedings against her appear to taking place on a different schedule. Authorities said she picked up Williams after the shooting, and tried to help him flee police.)
There were two other homicides within the city limits in 2013, both of which took place in West Berkeley. In February, Zontee Jones, 34, was shot in broad daylight on Delaware Street and San Pablo Avenue. In August, on the other side of San Pablo at Delaware, Dustin Bynum, 24, was shot at close range in front of Bing’s Liquors. Police have made arrests in both cases.
Related:
Berkeley community turns out for march against violence (10.08.13)
Robbery attempt led to Medearis killing; 2 charged (10.01.13)
‘Ceasefire Walk Against Violence’ comes to West Berkeley (10.01.13)
Murdered man was brother of man killed by gangs in 2009 (07.18.13)
Breaking: Man shot and killed on Derby Street in Berkeley (07.17.13)
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