Newsom pauses, but does not halt, parole for man who killed two white teens in racist rampage

A black security guard who murdered two white teens in a racist shooting rampage at the Bay Area workplace he was hired to protect has had his parole temporarily blocked by California Governor Gavin Newsom, who told officials to look again at his parole plans.

Sebron Flenaugh opened fire on staff at the MicroPure office in Concord, CA in June 1988. He gunned down 17-year-old Jennifer Hollis and 19-year-old Jim Disney, and grievously wounded four others, only stopping because he ran out of bullets.

The Oaklander claimed he felt “disrespected” at work.

“I ask the board to evaluate Mr Flenaugh’s proposed parole plans, including his relapse prevention plans and his proposed strategies for maintaining mental health stability, and determine if they are sufficient to support his success on parole,” wrote Newsom in a December 2 2025 letter.

Newsom declined to reverse the board of parole hearings’ determination outright. Flenaugh’s grant of parole will now be dealt with at an ‘en banc’ hearing of parole commissioners likely in the next month or two.

While reversals ensure an inmate stays in prison, mere requests for reconsideration usually result in them still being released.

---

After a bench trial Flenaugh was found guilty and sentenced to 30 years to life in prison for two counts of second-degree murder plus 23 years to life for four counts of attempted murder, to run consecutively. The sentencing judge said that he would spend the rest of his life in prison.

“At the end of today’s hearing we get ‘well, okay, I did shoot them ‘cause they were white’. Well, okay, but none of those people did anything to you.” — Michael Gressett, Deputy District Attorney

At Fle­naugh’s Au­gust 21 2025 pa­role hear­ing com­mis­sion­ers were per­suaded to spring him over the ob­jec­tions of a pros­e­cu­tor and be­reaved fam­ily mem­bers.

“One chill­ing as­pect of the com­mit­ment of­fense,” said Con­tra Costa deputy dis­trict at­tor­ney Michael Gres­sett, “is the sur­vivors talk­ing about how Mr Fle­naugh is lit­er­ally smil­ing as he’s do­ing the shoot­ing.”

Gres­sett told com­mis­sion­ers that Fle­naugh used a .357 mag­num to me­thod­i­cally shoot each vic­tim be­fore flee­ing the scene in his Cadil­lac.

“At the end of to­day’s hear­ing we get ‘well, okay, I did shoot them ‘cause they were white’. Well, okay, but none of those peo­ple did any­thing to you,” Gres­sett said.

He noted in his clos­ing re­marks that the 36 years Fle­naugh had served so far was “way shy” of the im­posed sen­tence.

The hear­ing was told that, to avoid in­flam­ing racial ten­sions pre­sent in late 80s Con­cord, au­thor­i­ties had been des­per­ate to avoid mak­ing race a fea­ture of their case. Pros­e­cu­tors took the death penalty off the table in or­der, they told vic­tim fam­i­lies, to more ef­fec­tively and cer­tainly se­cure a con­vic­tion.

But Jen­nifer’s fa­ther, Ronald Hollis, took heart, he said, from Judge Michael Phe­lan’s as­sur­ance that Fle­naugh’s sen­tence would see him im­pris­oned for the rest of his nat­ural life.

Dur­ing the hear­ing Hollis held up a group pho­to­graph of his daugh­ter and her Mi­croP­ure col­leagues.

“I don’t think phys­i­cal or age-re­lated is­sues are a rea­son to re­lease this man – his crimes are heinous,” he said. “I can tell you that be­fore my wife passed in De­cem­ber, I told her I’d do every­thing I could to keep this man jail for the rest of my life and that’s why I’m here to­day.”

Hill also re­mem­bered Jim Dis­ney to com­mis­sion­ers and high­lighted the life-chang­ing in­juries sus­tained by other sur­vivors.

“Our entire family has been given a life sentence of heartache and grief.” — Nancy Gaines, Jennifer Hill’s aunt

“Our en­tire fam­ily has been given a life sen­tence of heartache and grief,” Jen­nifer’s aunt, Nancy Gaines, told the hear­ing.

Fle­naugh’s at­tor­ney, Josiah Hart­man, rested much of his case for his 82-year-old clien­t’s re­lease on what he said was his cog­ni­tive de­cline and age-re­lated in­fir­mity.

“We’re cer­tainly not propos­ing that his phys­i­cal is­sues pre­vent him from pulling a trig­ger again. But we do think they should be taken into con­sid­er­a­tion when you con­sider the path and road that led Mr Fle­naugh to the point of pulling a trig­ger and how his phys­i­cal is­sues may pre­vent that road again.”

Af­ter de­lib­er­at­ing for 48 min­utes pre­sid­ing com­mis­sioner Lawrence Nwa­jei an­nounced that he and deputy com­mis­sioner Cristina Guer­rero had de­cided to grant pa­role.

“There was a time when peo­ple like you would never dream of be­ing paroled, the pol­i­tics of the time,” Nwa­jei told Fle­naugh. “But those times were dif­fer­ent and the law has been evolv­ing be­cause peo­ple now know there is men­tal ill­ness out there, we talk about it now in so­ci­ety. Back then it was a shame­ful thing to say ‘hey, I’m not okay.’”

“While to­day, we are con­sid­er­ing giv­ing you a sec­ond chance, you did­n’t give the vic­tims a sec­ond chance and that’s what makes these de­ci­sions as heart-wrench­ing for us who have to make these de­ci­sions – and for any­one who’s lis­ten­ing or who will re­view it, it gives us no de­light what­so­ever.”

Fle­naugh re­mains in Cor­co­ran State Prison await­ing the outcome of an ‘en banc’ review of his parole grant by the entire board of parole hearings at one of its twice-monthly meetings.

This will likely take place either later this month or in January 2025.

Update: At the December 23 2025 meeting of the board of parole hearings, commissioners voted not to confirm Flenaugh’s parole – instead ordering a formal rescission hearing, before another panel, to determine whether the parole grant should be cancelled outright.

Please sup­port our work by us­ing this Pay­pal link

To be no­ti­fied of new sto­ries en­ter your email ad­dress here or fol­low us on X