Update, April 4: Oakland police said that the two suspects they arrested March 29 in connection to a shooting that killed two Berkeley High School students and wounded two other teens were both juveniles at the time of the Oct. 1 attack.
“The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office charged one of the juveniles with the crime,” Oakland police spokesperson Officer Kim Armstead said in an email.
Through a spokesperson, the district attorney’s office said it could not specify which charges had been filed in juvenile cases.
Original, March 31: Oakland police arrested two people in shootings last year that left two Berkeley High School students dead, and two other teens hurt at a house party in North Oakland.
Oakland police said they made the arrests Wednesday. Information on the suspects’ identities, or how police believe they were involved in the killings, was not immediately available.
“Due to the holiday weekend, no further information is available. We hope to provide an update early next week,” Oakland police spokesperson Officer Kim Armstead said in an email Thursday night. Friday is Cesar Chavez Day.
Angel Sotelo Garcia, 15, and his brother Jazy, 17, were killed on Oct. 1, 2022.
The Sotelo Garcia brothers were attending a birthday party for another teenager at an Airbnb. Oakland police said an adult had rented the home in the 950 block of Apgar Street for the event, and approximately 30 teens attended.
A few hours into the party, three suspects went to the party house in a vehicle and went inside, two of them opening fire with a handgun and a rifle, police said at the time.
Officers from Oakland and Emeryville went to the house around 10 p.m. after 911 callers reported the gunfire, police said at the time.
Oakland officers found one victim outside the home and two inside, while officers from Emeryville found the fourth victim, one of the two that survived, a short distance away from the house.
“The district continues to keep the Sotelo Garcia family in our thoughts, and we send them love and support today,” Berkeley Unified School District Superintendant Enikia Ford Morthel said in an email Friday. “We continue to have counseling and support services available to our students as this process proceeds.”
In the immediate aftermath of the killings, the district ensured counselors were on hand in district schools for students and staff.
The brothers “were part of the fabric of our school community, and to lose them when they were so young and full of promise tears at what we are,” Ford Morthel said at the time.
The district hosted a memorial gathering on Oct. 3, attended by hundreds of district and community families.
“This is a wake-up call,” Josue Sotelo Garcia, the eldest of the victims’ four surviving siblings, said at the gathering. “They’d want us to get better, they’d want us to succeed, be something good in life.”
Friends and relatives remembered Jazy as a calm, quiet and upbeat boy who enjoyed soccer and music, and Angel as a social butterfly with a mischievous side.
The brothers’ family had to wait until the end of October to hold a funeral, as autopsies were delayed by a countywide backlog, due in part to a spike in homicides and a shortage of doctors.
News of an arrest in this case was first reported by the Berkeley Scanner.
