OAKLAND — A 34-year-old Oakland man has been charged with murder in a deadly shooting near the Northgate Retirement Center, barely a month after an Alameda County judge warned him not to pick up a gun, due to his suspected involvement in an earlier shooting outside the building.
Amadi Monroe is accused of killing Jerald Larnell Clark II shortly after 9 p.m. on Aug. 8 on the 500 block of 25th Street in Oakland, just around the block from the retirement center in Oakland’s Koreatown Northgate district, according to court documents.
Monroe was arrested three days after the killing at a relative’s apartment inside the center and charged with murder and possession of a firearm by a felon, along with numerous sentencing enhancements, court documents show. One such enhancement claims he fired the fatal shot from a vehicle.
He remained held Wednesday at the Santa Rita Jail without bail.
The killing came just weeks after Alameda County Superior Court Judge Thomas Nixon while lowering Monroe’s bail warned him to avoid guns and the retirement center, after his alleged involvement in a separate shooting there five months earlier.
Oakland police suspect Monroe fired at least two shots at a vehicle fleeing the retirement center on March 27, before heading inside the building and boarding an elevator, court documents show. He was arrested two months later in Yolo County.
Nixon ruled in early July that prosecutors had enough evidence to take the case to trial. In the process, he agreed to lower Nixon’s bail from $300,000 to $200,000 after Monroe’s attorney asked it be dropped to $40,000.
“I really shouldn’t do that,” Nixon said at the hearing on July 3. He noted that “your history is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the best,” but took into consideration the two charges Monroe was facing, shooting at an occupied motor vehicle and possession of a firearm by a felon. Still, Nixon said that “I’m going to do it anyway, because I think you’ve already spent a significant amount of time in jail.”
His ruling came with a strict admonishment.
“I cannot stress this enough: You cannot have a gun, period,” Nixon said, according to a transcript of the preliminary hearing. “If you’re caught with another gun, you will get serious state time. I’m not going to entertain anything that wouldn’t include that again. Understood?” He also told him to stay 100 yards from the center.
Court records show that Monroe’s bail was posted on July 20.
Right before the Aug. 8 killing, Clark told his wife that he was going outside to meet someone named “Bang,” court documents show.
Authorities later discovered that “Bang” was a nickname for Monroe, leading to his arrest. During an interview with detectives, Monroe confessed to the killing, an Oakland police investigator wrote in court papers.
The killing marked marked the 66th death investigated as a homicide by Oakland police in 2023. It came amid a violent, seven-hour stretch that saw two other people also killed in the city.
Source: www.mercurynews.com