A 19-year-old Vallejo man has been charged with stalking his ex-girlfriend and firing a gun outside her house, along with several other crimes, in connection with a domestic violence investigation in Berkeley last week.
Police say Devon King harassed the young woman with text messages that became “threatening and aggressive” and, on March 22, fired a “warning shot” outside her Berkeley home. Police said King then posted a photograph online that showed him “driving his vehicle with a pistol lying on the front passenger seat.” The caption, police said, was “Who else needs a warning shot?”
Officers arrested King in Berkeley without incident at 5:15 p.m. that day, according to charging documents.
Police later found an unregistered handgun with a high-capacity 14-round magazine during a search of King’s Vallejo apartment, according to court papers, and also found a box of ammunition in his silver BMW.
During a police interview, according to court papers, King “admitted to shooting his weapon in front of the victim’s residence earlier that morning” and also said he had harassed the woman “multiple times via text messages over the past few weeks.”
When he was arrested, police served King with an emergency protective order to prohibit him from any contact with his ex-girlfriend, according to court papers. That same night, however, he called the woman from a jail phone in violation of the order, according to police.
According to court records, the Alameda County district attorney’s office has charged King with three felonies — stalking, gunfire with gross negligence and carrying a loaded gun in a city — and three misdemeanors: possession of a large-capacity magazine, making annoying telephone calls and disobeying the protective order.
King remains in custody at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin with a bail of $225,000, according to jail records online. He is scheduled for a preliminary hearing — where a judge decides if there is enough evidence for a case to go to trial — on April 22 at the East County Hall of Justice in Dublin.
