OAKLAND, Calif. -- Gumaro Baez, 22, was found guilty this week of two murders and two attempted murders for killing two teenage girls who witnessed him try to kill two men during a bloody rampage in a van on Super Bowl Sunday in 2008.
Baez, who will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole early next year, admitted the killings in a letter he wrote to a fellow inmate at Santa Rita Jail. In the letter, Baez said he attempted to kill one of the victims in revenge for his brother's death a year earlier and tried to kill another man and killed the two girls because they witnessed the first shooting.
The jury used that letter and statements the two surviving witnesses gave to police to convict Baez of the double murders, double attempted murders and several enhancements and special circumstances, which included killing witnesses and committing a double murder.
"The jury's verdict was appropriate and will bring some justice to the families," said deputy district attorney Stacie Pettigrew. "The jury worked hard."
Baez's letter, which his attorney denied he wrote, gave vivid details of the Feb. 3, 2008, shooting that resulted in the death of cousins Dominique Hoover-Brown, 15, and Melissa Jackson, 17, both of San Leandro, and the attempted murders of two other men who also were in the van.
The letter explains how Baez got into the van with his friend Devashawn Walker to confront the driver, who Baez believed was responsible
for the death of his brother, Adiel Meza. Meza was gunned down by an Oakland police officer in 2007 after he repeatedly reached for a gun he had just been shooting into the air. Baez believed the driver of the van should have allowed his brother into his home before police arrived.
In addition to the letter, Pettigrew presented the jury with statements given by the driver and front passenger of the van to police shortly after the shooting. In both statements, the victims said Baez was the shooter.
Although the victims said they did not remember the shooting when they testified during the trial, Pettigrew argued that their original statements to police should be taken as fact because neither wanted to testify during the trial for fear of retaliation.
An inmate who gave police Baez's letter also refused to cooperate during the trial, saying during testimony that he wrote the letter. That statement was disputed during the trial and was one the jury did not believe, Pettigrew said.
But Baez's defense attorney, Albert Wax, focused on the memory of the two victims and the inmate who claimed he wrote the letter to defend his client against the charges.
Wax said that the testimony showed the district attorney's office had not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that his client committed the crimes. Instead, Wax pointed at Walker as the killer.
The jury, however, did not believe that argument was valid as it found Baez guilty of almost every charge against him.
While the jury believed Baez committed the crimes in the van on Feb. 3, 2008, it did not find the Oakland native guilty of slaying a man a day before.
Pettigrew has asked for a guilty verdict in the killing of that man based on ballistics tests that showed the man was killed by a bullet fired from Baez's gun.
But there were no witnesses to the crime, and Pettigrew could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Baez was at the scene of that slaying.
Copyright 2011 - The Oakland Tribune, Calif.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
