OAKLAND — Two Oakland men have pleaded no contest to killing a 20-year-old man in a shooting that also wounded the victim’s mother, court records show.
Abdiel Guerrero, 27, and Selvin Peña, 24, pleaded no contest Oct. 17 to murdering 20-year-old Christian Casillas. They are scheduled to be sentenced to 15 years to life on Jan. 20, court records show.
Casillas was shot and killed while driving to a family member’s house with his mother and father at around 10 p.m. on Sept. 28, 2016, after a passing vehicle with at least three occupants pulled up next to them on the 1900 block of Auseon Avenue in East Oakland. Casillas’ mother and father testified at the 2018 preliminary hearing that two gunmen began shooting at their car, firing dozens of rounds.
“The only thing that I heard was that Christian said, ‘Mom, let’s go,’ and he just covered his two siblings and his mother and they went running toward the house,” Casillas’ father testified at the hearing, speaking through a Spanish translator. Neither the mother nor the father was able to identify the assailants, court records show.
Earlier in the drive, Casillas noticed the suspects’ vehicle following him and told his parents to speed away, the father testified.
Oakland police Detective Kris McClain testified at the hearing that both Guerrero and Peña confessed to their involvement, though Peña told several versions of the same story. In one, he reportedly pinned the shooting on a fourth occupant of the vehicle. In another version, he said he wasn’t there. Eventually, he told police that both he and Guerrero fired, though he said someone else handed him the gun and that he “closed his eyes and started shooting at the victim’s car,” according to McClain.
Peña told police that he and Guerrero blamed Casillas — who he knew only by a street nickname — for a prior shooting that killed one of their friends.
The suspected driver of the victim, then-17-year-old Nelson “Junior” Lopez, was charged as a juvenile, authorities said.
Source: www.mercurynews.com