Alleged Gunman Charged in Fatal Shooting of California Parole Officer

The man accused of fatally shooting Parole Officer Joshua Byrd last week in East Oakland had been told to leave a state building prior to the deadly encounter, after showing up a day late to meet with his parole officer, according to court documents released Monday.
Bryan Keith Hall, 48, was charged Monday with murder in the killing of Byrd, a 40-year-old parole officer who was shot dead on Thursday inside a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation building.
Alameda County prosecutors filed 10 counts against Hall, including robbery charges stemming from an alleged hold-up on a transit bus after the shooting, as well as charges tied to his alleged use of a stolen vehicle to elude police, court documents show.
Hall also faces a special circumstance enhancement, which could leave him in prison for life without the possibility of parole if he’s convicted at trial. The sentencing enhancement is tied to the fact that Byrd was working as a police officer at the time of his death.

OAKLAND, California — The man accused of fatally shooting Parole Officer Joshua Byrd last week in East Oakland had been told to leave a state building prior to the deadly encounter, after showing up a day late to meet with his parole officer, according to court documents released Monday.

Bryan Keith Hall, 48, was charged Monday with murder in the killing of Byrd, a 40-year-old parole officer who was shot dead on Thursday inside a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation building.

Alameda County prosecutors filed 10 counts against Hall, including robbery charges stemming from an alleged hold-up on a transit bus after the shooting, as well as charges tied to his alleged use of a stolen vehicle to elude police, court documents show.

Hall also faces a special circumstance enhancement, which could leave him in prison for life without the possibility of parole if he’s convicted at trial. The sentencing enhancement is tied to the fact that Byrd was working as a police officer at the time of his death.

Hall did not speak during his first court appearance Monday and kept his head bowed and his face hidden from view while remaining shackled and wearing a green vest mean to prevent him from harming himself. Hall did not enter a plea, and his public defender waived his arraignment during a hearing that lasted just four minutes. Hall was returned to the Santa Rita Jail, where he is being held without bail.

In the courtroom gallery, scores of law enforcement officers — many of them other parole agents and colleagues from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation — looked on, in a crowd that spilled out into the adjacent hallway.

Authorities claim the shooting came a day after Hall missed a meeting scheduled for Wednesday with his parole agent, according to an affidavit filed in support of his arrest.

When Hall showed up Thursday to the office on Edgewater Drive, he signed in at about 12:40 p.m. but was told to leave, because his parole officer was not there, the affidavit said.

At some point after that, Byrd was shot and Hall was seen fleeing the building and holding a gun, according to court documents. Police found three shell casings at the crime scene, authorities said.

Investigators offered no clues Monday about what immediately proceeded the shooting, why Byrd was shot or what the agent had been doing prior to the shooting. Alameda County District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson said investigators had found no signs that Hall and Byrd had any prior contact.

Surveillance footage later showed Hall running outside the building and onto an AC Transit bus, where authorities suspect he robbed a passenger, the court files show. He got off near San Leandro Street and 66th Avenue, authorities said.

He was later seen getting out of a stolen vehicle about a mile away near Hillside Street and 79th Avenue, authorities said. A nearby home doorbell camera then caught him taking off an orange safety vest, according to the documents.

Hall was arrested near 90th Avenue and International Boulevard, according to Oakland police. Authorities later found a gun with the orange vest in a dumpster near where the doorbell camera had spotted him running down the street, the records show.

The shooting prompted dueling accusations Monday by Alameda County’s current and former district attorneys over why Hall had been on parole at the time of the killing, as opposed to behind bars for a 2022 stabbing near Lake Merritt.

Hall had been on parole since Feb. 5, when he was sentenced to four years in prison for the stabbing, which appeared to happen at random after witnesses saw Hall mumbling and talking to himself. He was immediately released at his sentencing hearing because he had already spent more than two years in county jail awaiting trial, and a judge allowed him to cut his sentence in half for good behavior, court records show.

On Monday, Jones Dickson criticized her predecessor, Pamela Price, for not pursuing a harsher sentence in the case. Under Price, prosecutors needed approval from her administration’s leaders to file sentencing enhancements that significantly increased prison terms. The policy — which Price’s opponents viewed as a sign she was soft on crime — became a key point of contention during the November recall election, when voters removed the former civil rights attorney from office.

Hall was first charged in November 2022 under former District Attorney Nancy O’Malley, who filed a sentencing enhancement for Hall’s alleged use of a knife during the stabbing. Barely a week after the recall election, a prosecutor in Price’s office successfully argued at a preliminary hearing that enough evidence existed for Hall to face the enhancement at trial, along with an attempted murder charge.

On Nov. 25, about two weeks before Price left office, a prosecutor filed a new set of charges that included everything except the weapons-related sentencing enhancement, court records show. Hall then accepted a plea deal in January — after Price left office, but before Jones Dickson was sworn in — that called for the dismissal of the attempted murder charge, in favor of a charge of assault with a deadly weapon. Royl Roberts, a chief assistant to Price, was filling in as DA at the time.

At a press conference Monday, Jones Dickson argued that Hall could have been sentenced to more prison time had the sentencing enhancement policy not been in place and if prosecutors pursued sentencing enhancements when refiling the charges after the November evidentiary hearing. Jones Dickson announced a decision to repeal the policy on Feb. 18, when she was sworn into office.

“That’s a huge difference in time” behind bars, Jones Dickson said.

In her own press release, Price stressed that Hall entered his plea and was sentenced after she left office, adding that “silence and spin will not bring back Parole Agent Joshua Byrd, but honesty and accountability are the bare minimum his family — and Oakland — deserve.”

Byrd, a married father of three, became a parole agent in October, after having worked for about 10 years as a correctional officer and sergeant at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville. His death marks the first on-duty killing of a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation officer in seven years.

Jakob Rodgers is a senior breaking news reporter. Call, text or send him an encrypted message via Signal at 510-390-2351, or email him at [email protected].