MARTINEZ — An Oakland man accused of murdering his ex-girlfriend amid a child custody dispute is serving as his own attorney as he goes to trial facing charges that could result with him being locked away for life without parole.
Ramello D. Randle, 27, is charged with first-degree murder and special circumstances of lying in wait in the July 2020 shooting death of 24-year-old Jonaye Lahkel Bridges. He is accused of secretly placing a tracking device on Bridges’ car, then following her to a 7-Eleven in Antioch and spraying her friend’s vehicle with bullets, killing her and wounding her male companion.
Randle’s co-defendant, Christopher Slaughter, accepted a plea deal last month, admitting involvement in the killing by driving Randle to the area. Randle has already indicated that he will blame Slaughter for the murder.
The special circumstances allegation makes Randle eligible for a sentence of life without the possibility of parole if convicted. With the stakes so high, Randle has forsaken his court-appointed lawyer and will defend himself against the charges. He has already openly clashed with Contra Costa Judge Charles “Ben” Burch, including on the first day of trial when Randle accused deputies in the Martinez jail of misplacing crucial legal paperwork, then interrupted the prosecution’s opening statement.
“He’s making all of this up,” Randle said while Contra Costa Deputy District Attorney Kevin Bell spoke at the start of trial Tuesday. “Slaughter was doing that…that’s why you don’t want the jury to hear nothing about Slaughter.”
Burch then admonished jurors he had, in fact, allowed Randle to use Slaughter’s possible involvement as an affirmative defense. Then he turned to Randle.
“I’ve told you several times I don’t want you to make editorial comments. This is the fourth or fifth time I’ve asked you not to make editorial comments,” Burch said, adding that Randle would get his chance to respond.
“How?” Randle asked.
“When it’s your turn,” Burch shot back.
Randle later declined to make an opening statement, saying he would do so after the prosecution rested its case. On Tuesday morning, outside the presence of the jury, Randle lamented that he’d lost a bunch of crucial paperwork and accused deputies at the jail of mishandling his legal documents and writings.
“This wasn’t the first time and it’s not going to be the last time,” Randle said. Burch said he’d give Randle the 90-minute lunch break to fine tune his opening statement, after noting the trial had already been delayed for a day while deputies searched for the missing files.
When the jury’s day-and-a-half of waiting in the courthouse halls was over and they entered the courtroom, Bell greeted them and said the case would be about Randle “trying to use technology to commit the perfect crime.” He said Randle bought a GPS tracker online and fixed it to Bridges’ car, then texted Slaughter about it.
“I put a tracker on the b—- car, the one we getting tonight,” Randle texted Slaughter, according to Bell. He later added, “He believed Ms. Bridges was unfit to be a mother and should not have custody of his own child.”
Bridges had given birth to the couple’s child just months earlier, but things quickly went south, Bell said. He said they’d both taken restraining orders out against each other and Randle was due for a home visit by Children and Family Services just hours after the shooting.
Bell showed jurors surveillance footage from the 7-Eleven at 2301 Buchanan Road in Antioch, which shows a masked gunman wearing a sweater walk up and fire a pistol. Eighteen bullets struck two parked cars, Bell said, striking Bridges and her friend several times. The friend, a local security guard who would meet Bridges in the area after work sometimes, was hit in the arm and survived.
Before the shooting, Bell said Slaughter went into the store ostensibly to buy Gatorades, but actually to survey the area in preparation for the shooting, Bell claimed. He said the two had used the GPS tracker to follow Bridges from Oakland to Antioch.
“It’s a pretty long distance to go from Oakland to Antioch for some Gatorades,” Bell said.
Before the shooting, Randle searched online for things like “what will make a gas tank explode,” and “will my bullets explode if I sit them in gasoline.” Afterwards, he allegedly searched for “killings in Antioch, CA.” Randle shook his head as Bell described those alleged searches. When Bell said that Randle’s palm print was lifted off the murder weapon — found in Slaughter’s car shortly after the shooting — Randle loudly scoffed.
Source: www.mercurynews.com