Five head to trial after Bayview drive-by shooting was cracked in 24 hours
A drive-by shooting in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood, which saw a gang member hit and a nearby home riddled with gunfire, was cracked by police in 24 hours after it emerged that officers in Oakland had filmed the perpetrators departing for the attack and returning hours later.
The revelation came during a lengthy preliminary hearing in San Francisco Superior Court which saw four defendants sent to trial on a battery of charges including attempted murder, and one other set to face a jury for firearms offenses after an arsenal of weapons was found by law enforcement.
Prosecutors say that in September 2023 Phillip Stewart drove a car from which Shaquille Dumetz and Jahari Oliver opened fire on a rival. Corey Martin-Turner, they say, collected the trio after the shooting in another vehicle. When police apprehended Dumetz they also found Jacobi Sanford and five firearms.
“The fact that you have poor marksmanship doesn’t diminish the fact that he was shot at multiple times,” said Judge Bruce Chan today as he rejected a suggestion from a defense attorney that there was no intent to kill the victim when his assailants fired 18 rounds at him.
The judge also turned down requests to grant pretrial release to the defendants.
“The idea that I would release any of the four people charged in the drive-by shooting to ICR…is simply beyond my comprehension,” he said. “These people present a clear and present danger…they all should be detained without bail.”
“These people present a clear and present danger…they all should be detained without bail.”
Judge Bruce Chan
The case is emblematic of many involving gang-related violence in San Francisco with a nexus to the East Bay. It also highlights the key role played by inter-agency cooperation as, here, Oakland PD had placed a remotely-monitored surveillance vehicle (or ‘drop car’) on an Oakland street as part of their investigation into a spate of murders one week before the San Francisco shooting.
It is a carbon copy of a 2020 drive-by shooting in the same location which resulted in the death of 18-year-old Jerome Mallory – cousin to San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins’ husband.
The defendants were ordered to appear for arraignment in Department 22 on September 9 at 9:00am
The court heard evidence from the first officer to arrive at the incident scene.
“I was dispatched to a ‘shots fired’ call,” testified SFPD officer Brett Noh. He was sent to Donner Avenue in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood shortly after 2:00pm on September 7 2023.
On arrival, he said, a witness told him “she was inside her residence and heard five or six loud gunshots and observed damage to her house.”
He told the court that the shots hit the woman’s apartment, shattering the glass in the front door and damaging a wall and window frame.
On the street and sidewalk outside, he said, were six spent 7.62mm cases and six spent 9mm cases.
Sergeant Matthew Sullivan of SFPD’s gang task force testified that the victim, Brian Vandercourt “self-transported” to UCSF Benioff Hospital where he was treated for a gunshot wound to his thigh.
“I know the victim,” Sullivan said. “He is a Double Rock [gang] affiliate.”
The court was shown footage obtained by police from Watchtower surveillance cameras on Donner Avenue which, they said, showed an 18-round fusillade being fired from a white Infiniti G37.
In the minutes leading up to the shooting Vandercourt is seen walking a small dog and talking to the occupants of a car in relaxed fashion. At 2:10pm the white Infiniti is seen hurtling around a corner and driving past the victim. Vandercourt is shown releasing the dog while puffs of dust – caused by bullets – appear on the building behind him and on the ground around him.
While at the hospital, Sullivan said, Vandercourt would say nothing about what had happened. He was arrested later that day for an outstanding warrant.
Peering closely at a still image of the video, Judge Chan said he could make out “a minimum of three people” in the car.
“The rear passenger window is down and it looks like someone is holding something on the back seat,” he added.
Sullivan was later made aware that Ingleside officers had recovered the vehicle used in the shooting.
Officer Victor Lau, of SFPD’s Ingleside station, told the court that he and his partner responded to a report of a suspicious vehicle. “I saw a white Infiniti G37 in front of [a house on] Rome Street,” he said. The vehicle was stolen, Lau determined, and his search turned up six bullet casings inside.
Video then obtained from a nearby residence showed the Infiniti arrive on Rome Street 17 minutes after the Bayview shooting. There the occupants of the Infiniti abandoned the car and got in to a dark colored Hyundai sedan which then fled.
Lau had dispatchers check if any officers were looking for an Infiniti that had been involved in a firearms incident and a connection was immediately made.
An officer from SFPD’s major crimes unit – Brian Zahn – gave astonishing testimony which illustrated that the case was in the process of being solved as it was happening.
Oakland police, Zahn said, were focused on three homicides that had occurred a week earlier. This apparently referred, in part, to a murderous attack on mourners at a memorial service for Tre-4 gang member Tahmon Wilson on August 30 2023 in Oakland. Angela Cummings, 40, was shot in the head and died at the scene. 29-year-old San Francisco resident Taivale Tautalatasi died days later in hospital.
As part of their investigation they were allowed the use of a “drop car” – a covert surveillance vehicle equipped with an array of remotely operated cameras – by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. This had been placed in 64th Avenue Place – a cul de sac in east Oakland – and was being watched carefully on September 7
In the early afternoon of the day of the San Francisco shooting, Zahn told the court, an Oakland PD surveillance team spotted activity on the street, with multiple people getting into a white Infiniti G37 and a Hyundai Genesis and driving away. Oakland officers promptly took screen grabs from their live video feed and emailed them to colleagues in San Francisco police department asking for help identifying the individuals.
Zahn testified that he was able to immediately identify defendants Phillip Stewart and Shaquille Dumetz – respectively the Infiniti’s driver and passenger, as well as Corey Marin-Turner, the driver of the Hyundai. Jahari Oliver, a passenger in the Hyundai as it departed, was later identified.
Earlier Sgt Sullivan, asked how Oakland police knew to inquire of SFPD with respect to the identities of the men, said it was based on “OPD’s understanding of who they were surveilling at 64th Avenue Place and their ties to San Francisco.”
Sullivan testified that he knew several of the defendants by sight. He had detained Jahari Oliver on “his first gun arrest when he was 16 years old,” arrested Stewart in Vallejo, arrested Sanford in Oakland in possession of a rifle, knew Martin-Turner from a previous case, and had seen Dumetz from time to time on the street.
Assistant District Attorney Kourtney Bell would later tell the court that, in the prosecution’s view, the occupants of the cars stopped to reshuffle on the way to the shooting. At the time the Infiniti arrived at Donner Avenue, he said, Stewart was driving the vehicle while Oliver, armed with a 9mm handgun, was in the front passenger seat, and Dumetz, armed with a rifle, was in the back.
The court heard testimony on cellphone use that, prosecutors said, bolstered their contention that some defendants were at the various scenes captured on video.
One pivotal piece of information – identification of Philip Stewart’s social media monickers – arose from a probation search of another criminal’s phone. That man, Lipine Faafiu, is a gang member whose rap sheet includes involvement in a car-to-car shooting on the Bay Bridge and near-constant firearms possession.
Following the August 30 memorial shooting, mortally-wounded Taivale Tautalatsi was driven to hospital in Faafiu’s car in which unfired an AK47 round was later found.
Faafiu has recently returned to Santa Rita Jail after recuperating from surgery in a medical facility where he was under 24 hour a day guard by U.S. Marshals.
In May he failed to persuade a court to dismiss the Marshals from the facility in order to facilitate his path back to health as, in effect, they would not allow him to move around. U.S. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim said she was worried about his gang associates supplying him with guns in the facility and the ensuing threat to community safety.
The court heard that Dumetz was eventually apprehended when SFPD tactical officers executed a search warrant at 123 Maddux Avenue in San Francisco’s Bayview on the morning of February 13 2024.
SFPD Officer Joe Sharlow testifed that it took 10-15 minutes of “call outs” delivered via loudspeaker. plus the deployment of multiple “noise/flash diversion devices,” before Dumetz left the premises by the front door.
Over the next half an hour five others left the premises after further encouragement from police in the form of 40mm frangible “less lethal” rounds being fired at the windows of the property. Of these five, two – Jacobi Sanford and Deonte White – were arrested alongside Dumetz.
SFPD Sgt Thomas Moran testified that five firearms were recovered. A Glock 26, fitted with an automatic switch, was found in an upstairs bedroom. An AR-15-style rifle was found in a duffel bag in the garage. Three other Glocks, two equipped with high capacity magazines, were found in the warming tray of an oven in the kitchen.
SFPD Officer Vincent Masiling told the court that Jahari Oliver was arrested with another man on February 3 2024. The vehicle in which he was traveling had been ‘spike stripped’ by an SFPD auto burglary abatement squad and come to a halt near the intersection of Drumm and Washington Streets. Masiling found a Glock 19 9mm handgun tossed behind a nearby planter on the grip of which, the court heard, Oliver’s DNA was found.
The court received evidence from SFPD criminalist, Jacobus Swanepoel, to the effect that a forensic comparison between this Glock 19 and the spent 9mm casings found at the scene of Brian Vandercourt’s shooting showed that the former had been used to fire the latter.
Defendants’ extensive rap sheets
Phillip Stewart was convicted of assault with a firearm, and was sentenced to nine years in state prison, after a gunfight near San Francisco’s Union Square resulted in the death of a German elementary school teacher, Mechthild Schroer, who was visiting the city to celebrate her wedding anniversary.
The notorious August 2010 incident also saw two others wounded.
Shaquille Dumetz is a prolific auto burglar. Deonte White and Jahari Oliver also have lengthy arrest records.
Jacobi Sanford most recently served a two year federal sentence for being a felon in possession of an AR-15-style rifle equipped with an extended magazine. SFPD officers found the rifle in a stolen Dodge Charger he was driving – a vehicle suspected of involvement in multiple residential burglaries in the city. A subsequent search of Sanford’s phone uncovered photos of him brandishing the weapon.
He was last arrested in the Bayview on July 10 2023 – where he is forbidden to be by the terms of his supervised release. Notably this did not provoke federal officials to bring him back to court.
“The court is going to hold-to-answer all the defendants as charged,” said Judge Bruce Chan today in Department 24 of San Francisco’s Hall of Justice. He described as “patently unreasonable” a defense suggestion that the hail of bullets sent Vandercourt’s way was not intended to kill him.
He ruled that Jacobi Sanford will ultimately be tried separately as there was no suggestion that he was involved in the drive by shooting itself. He also threw out five ‘possession of a firearm with a prior conviction’ counts Sanford faced after a previous robbery conviction was called into question.
Defendant Deonte White, who was arrested with Shaquille Dumetz and Jacobi Sanford at the home in which five guns were found, will continue his preliminary hearing on September 12 2024. Originally his case was heard with the other defendants but his attorney became indisposed during the case.
The judge refused motions to release the defendants. He did indicate that he might be prepared to release Sanford if he was certain that he would be immediately taken into custody of another jurisdiction. The court was told there were two extant warrants for Sanford’s arrest: one from Oakland PD, which had precedence, and one from the U.S. Marshals.
Assistant District Attorney Kourtney Bell appeared for the People. Robert Treiman represented Sanford, George Lazarus represented Dumetz, Katy Isa represented Oliver, Harris Taback represented Martin-Turner and Peter Fitzpatrick represented Phillip Stewart.
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