A Berkeley man has been charged with multiple felonies after he held a gun on his adopted daughters and threatened to kill them, according to police, then fired his gun outside their home when one of the girls ran away.
According to court papers, Larry Candies, 30, got into a fight with his wife July 8 and struck her in the face with a glass cup. He threw the cup at her and it broke, sending glass shards onto a bed where their 1-year-old daughter was, police wrote. The argument took place at the couple’s home in the 1000 block of Francisco Street near San Pablo Avenue.
Candies then pulled out a gun, brandished it at two of the couple’s older daughters and “threatened to kill them,” police wrote. One of the girls hid in a bathroom. Candies, police wrote, “kicked the door in and continued yelling at her.” The girl ran outside to escape.
Candies chased the girl into the street, police wrote, and “fired a single shot from his pistol.” Police wrote that he fired in either the girl’s direction or in the direction of witnesses across the street.
Police arrested Candies on a warrant July 16 in the city of San Pablo, according to jail records online.
On Thursday, the Alameda County district attorney’s office charged Candies with injury to a relationship partner, two counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm (one for each of the daughters), terrorist threats, discharge of a firearm with gross negligence, possession of a firearm by a felon, and possession of ammunition by a prohibited person. He entered not guilty pleas that day.
According to court documents, Candies has a felony robbery conviction, from Solano County, in 2009.
A conviction in the new case would be Candies’ second strike, according to court papers.
Candies is being held on $750,000 bail at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin. He is scheduled for a pretrial hearing Aug. 18 at the René C. Davidson Courthouse in Oakland.
In 2019, BPD has had 16 confirmed incidents of gunfire; two saw young men wounded. UCPD had one shooting, which took place in People’s Park. It was fatal. Click the icon in the upper left corner of the map below to see the list.
[Correction: Candies has a 2009 conviction for robbery but the 2019 charges do not include robbery. The headline of this story was fixed immediately after publication.]
