A Solano County Superior Court judge set a June trial date for a 28-year-old man accused of the gunshot slaying of an unidentified 38-year-old woman at a Cordelia traffic stop in August 2020.
Randall James Garner, who appeared Wednesday in Department 23, heard Judge John B. Ellis order him to return at 9 a.m. June 16 for a jury trial in the Justice Center in Fairfield. The judge also ordered him to return at 8:30 a.m. June 2 for a trial management conference.
In the criminal complaint filed in 2020, the Solano County District Attorney’s Office cited two other counts besides murder against Garner: shooting at an occupied vehicle and being a felon in possession of a firearm, in addition to citing three prior convictions for joyriding, that is, taking someone else’s vehicle without their consent.
Garner is represented by defense attorney Gregory S. Clark of Vacaville, and Chief Deputy District Attorney Paul Sequeira leads the prosecution.
Details of the investigation and the circumstances that led to Garner’s arrest in September 2020 have not become available by the lead agency in the case, the Fairfield Police Department.
But court records also indicate the DA on Aug. 18, 2020, dismissed the murder charge against a Fairfield man, Louis Ray Marsh, 58 at the time, who was the initial suspect.
Killed in the pre-dawn hours of Aug. 14, the deceased woman has not been identified by the Solano County Coroner, which has continued to cite as the reason that the victim’s name remains “protected.”
Fairfield police investigators said the events leading to the killing began when the victim, as a passenger in a vehicle, waited at a traffic light on Lopes Road near the on-ramp to Interstate 80. Investigators initially said the killing likely stemmed from a previous altercation.
The driver of the victim’s vehicle sped off onto the freeway, the suspect shooting twice at him, striking his vehicle, police said. He subsequently exited Central Way, then called the police. His female passenger was pronounced dead.
Source: www.mercurynews.com