Three suspected gang members were charged with murder Friday in the fatal shooting of a 5-year-old girl while she rode in a car with her parents on Interstate 880 — a case that further underscores the progressive charging and sentencing reforms championed by Alameda County’s district attorney.
Yet even as District Attorney Pamela Price said the suspects had mistakenly fired at what they thought was a rival gang vehicle — killing Eliyanah Crisostomo, 5, of Santa Clara — she did not seek gang enhancements to the suspects’ sentences that could result in the death penalty or life without parole.
A gang enhancement to the murder charge was included for each suspect when they were booked by the California Highway Patrol. Authorities said the potential sentence for the charges announced Friday could range from 44 years to life in prison.
The suspects were identified in jail records as Humberto Anaya, 29, Emmanuel Sarango, 27, and Kristo Ayala, 25. The charges announced by the district attorney’s office Friday included murder and seven counts of shooting at an occupied motor vehicle.
Anaya and Ayala have been in custody at Santa Rita Jail since April 8 after they were arrested in a non-injury shooting that happened on Fremont streets just a few minutes before the highway killing. All three suspects were charged with assault with a semiautomatic firearm related to that shooting; Anaya and Ayala were also charged with carrying a concealed firearm inside a vehicle and carrying a loaded firearm.
In that incident, according to court records, a vehicle pulled alongside a pedestrian about 6:30 p.m. on Fremont Boulevard near Norris Road. The three occupants made statements that authorities said referred to gang colors, then the group got out, and one suspect fired on the person as he began to flee.
Sarango was arrested Wednesday in Oakland, according to jail records. All three men were being held without bail and were set to enter a plea on April 20.
In a statement, Price said the suspects had flashed gang symbols and “purposefully” fired at the vehicle, which contained the girl, her brother, her parents and two other people.
“My heart goes out to Eliyanah’s family,” Price said in the statement. “There is no reason young children should die on our Bay Area freeways. This behavior is absolutely unacceptable. We will not stand for gun violence and these three defendants will be held accountable for their despicable actions.”
Price has come under heavy fire in the first year of her term for seeking to reduce lengthy prison terms, including a pronouncement that her office would reduce the wide use of sentencing enhancements. Price has said that the change is “an effort to bring balance back to sentencing and reduce recidivism.”
The charges filed in the Crisostomo case indicate that Price doesn’t consider the killing as “extraordinary,” the type of case where she has said previously she would still consider enhancements. The top prosecutor has said that she would also weigh enhancements in a crime that causes “extensive” physical injury.
A number of prominent voices in the region have criticized Price for not doing more to give crime victims a feeling of justice.
“People want to feel safe and protected,” said Fremont Mayor Lily Mei, who has joined the calls for Price to reconsider her approach. “Crimes like these are appalling and heartbreaking.”
Still, Price’s criminal-justice reform efforts have been lauded by progressives as bringing balance to excessively harsh sentence lengths.
Lance Wilson, who was once convicted and incarcerated on a conspiracy drug charge — which carried an enhancement for possessing a gun — said pursuing harsher charges would not help rehabilitate those responsible.
“I don’t think it’d be just to put these people away for 100 years,” said Wilson, who works in communications for activist groups. “It’s so easy for someone who’s never been inside prison to talk about adding years and years to someone’s sentence.”
A protest earlier this week criticized Price’s statements in the November 2021 slaying of Jasper Wu, a 2-year-old shot and killed in his mother’s car on Interstate 880. Previous district attorney Nancy O’Malley filed charges that included potential enhancements after suspects were arrested late last year, but Price has indicated that she may adjust the charges.
Crisostomo was known as a “fun loving little girl who loved life,” according to an online fund-raising page that had already surpassed a $75,000 goal by Friday. She was shot about 6:40 p.m. April 8 in the eastbound lanes of Interstate 880 near the border between Fremont and Milpitas while seated next to her brother in a third-row passenger seat of her parents’ vehicle. The family was on its way to dinner.
A bullet pierced the girl’s heart, according to a statement from Price. She was pronounced dead at a hospital.
Mei remembered consoling Wu’s family after that child’s death and discussed the terrible loss felt by Crisostomo’s family.
“When I held Jasper’s mom, she told me that the only thing she wanted was for another family not to experience the same type of suffering,” Mei said. “I just can’t tell you how sad I was to know that the baby was a month shy of his birthday, and now his mom was telling me he was lying cold in a morgue. When it comes to innocent victims (like Wu’s parents), the public would like to see justice.”
Bay Area News Group staff writers Jakob Rodgers and Shomik Mukherjee contributed to this report.
Source: www.mercurynews.com