Police found bullet casings, a silver mask and blood spatter inside a black Mercedes linked to a shooting in West Berkeley in May, and located two guns nearby that detectives tied to the shooting and car, court papers reveal.
The evidence led to attempted murder charges last week against two Richmond men described in court documents as “known associates to South Berkeley Gangs.” The men have been identified as 30-year-old Mikel Williams and 22-year-old William Earl Robinson.
Police said previously that the May 13 shooting took place at 9:45 a.m. in the 2300 block of Eighth Street, near Dwight Way. One block west, on Seventh Street, police found a 27-year-old Berkeley man with serious injuries who had been shot. He was taken to the hospital but has since been released.
Police arrested Robinson the day of the shooting after he went to Kaiser’s Richmond Medical Center. He had been shot in the finger, according to court papers. He first told police he had been shot while inside a vehicle in Vallejo. During his arrest, police wrote, “he became belligerent and yelled at his girlfriend not to allow the police to take his clothing as evidence.”
Meanwhile, that same day, Richmond police went to Williams’s home in that city to investigate a vehicle parked in his driveway that had been involved in a shooting the prior day in Richmond, according to police. They found two loaded guns in that vehicle, and arrested Williams. He was already on probation for being a felon in possession of a gun, according to court documents.
BPD said Robinson later “told detectives he was with his friend ‘Mik’ and they were shot at while walking at an unknown location in Vallejo.”
Detectives said the evidence in the Berkeley shooting, however, all tied back to Williams and Robinson. Police wrote that phone records put Williams in West Berkeley at the time of the shooting, and that the casings found in the Mercedes matched the casings in the Mercedes “used during the shooting in Berkeley.”
In addition, the Mercedes and silver mask were “consistent with” what the victim in that shooting described to police.
Witness reports said the vehicle involved in the shooting had “collided with numerous objects as it fled,” and the Mercedes had front end damage when Richmond police found it parked very close to Williams’s home May 13. Surveillance footage showed the car used by the shooters to be a Mercedes, too.
Robinson and Williams were charged June 29 with attempted murder, shooting from a vehicle and assault with a semiautomatic firearm.
Robinson and Williams were charged individually with possession of a firearm by a convicted person or felon, carrying a loaded firearm and carrying a concealed firearm in a vehicle.
Robinson has a prior conviction, in 2013, for robbery, and Williams has a prior conviction, from 2012, for carrying a loaded firearm. Both cases were in Alameda County. Williams was convicted later that year, again in Alameda County, of possession of a loaded firearm by a felon. He also had an undated conviction in Contra Costa County for the same crime, according to court papers.
Robinson is being held without bail and is set for a pretrial hearing July 16. Williams remains in custody in Contra Costa County; his next court date was not immediately available.
