OAKLAND — Four people accused of trafficking and beating a girl at a Jack London Square hotel have accepted plea deals with wildly different outcomes, court records show.
Jamel Sneed, 23, pleaded no contest to pimping and carrying a concealed gun, and was sentenced last May to four years and eight months in state prison. Joseph Lewis Jr., 24, was given three years and eight months for pleading no contest to the same charges. His prison sentence was handed down in late October.
And that’s where the prison terms end. Their two co-defendants, Kahlil Crowell, 20, and Melanie Gritz, 21, were given sentences of six months’ house arrest and two years probation, respectively, in plea deals where they agreed to take accessory convictions. Additionally, 22-year-old Katina Williams, charged with assault, is still wanted on an $80,000 arrest warrant, records show.
The five were charged last year, based on a Dec. 16, 2021 incident in which the alleged victim — known only in court records as Jane Doe — reported being assaulted at the Jack London Inn on the 400 block of Embarcadero West in Oakland. During a police interview, the girl said she was being held against her will in a hotel room and forced “to walk the streets and perform sex acts for money,” investigators said in court records.
She said when she tried to leave the hotel room around 2 a.m. Dec. 16, she was attacked, with Lewis allegedly pulling a gun on her. Oakland police Officer Andriy Volynets wrote in a probable cause statement that Lewis allegedly “presented a firearm towards (Doe), racked the slide and stated something to the effects of, ‘Am I going to have to use this?’ ” Police say officers then found the girl outside of the Jack London Inn, where she was refusing to go back inside.
Sneed, Gritz, Crowell, and Lewis were all arrested at the hotel. Williams wasn’t there when police arrived and, according to police, hasn’t been heard from since.
In exchange for the no contest pleas, prosecutors dropped human trafficking charges against the four defendants. Sneed and Lewis faced up to six years and eight months if convicted as originally charged, according to the judge at their change-of-plea hearings.
Source: www.mercurynews.com