'QUITE POSSIBLE' SF gang member killed innocent man, but judge says evidence insufficient for sentence boost in gun case
A notorious San Francisco gang member caught a break today, when a judge rejected prosecutors’ plea to sentence him more harshly for a gun possession conviction after they insisted he had murdered a man in Oakland.
Joshua Pittman was found with a .40 caliber Glock equipped with an extended magazine when SFPD arrested him outside Oakland restaurant Pierre Pierre, where he worked, on June 28 2024.
Immediately after Pittman’s arrest prosecutors leveled the sensational allegation that he had gunned down 51-year-old Robert Ortega – an innocent bystander in a gunfight Pittman was accused of starting in North Oakland on June 23 2024.
Prosecutors pointed to what they said were “striking” similarities in build, height, hairstyle and eyewear between the killer, recorded on video, and Pittman’s appearance.
They said he was wearing the same shoes and carrying the same bag.
But today at Oakland federal courthouse U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White said that, while it was “quite possible” Pittman was the shooter, the evidence was insufficient for him to take it into account for the purposes of sentencing. He sentenced Pittman to 81 months’ imprisonment.
Pittman earlier pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm and admitting violating the terms of his probation.
“You did this while on supervised release for the same conduct,” said Judge White this afternoon. “It is very serious.”
“The court does not have many cases where it finds a person is a danger to the community…but I find that to be the case here based upon your conduct and I don’t see very much…in the way of mitigation.”
Police found the loaded Glock in a satchel Pittman had tossed into a Tesla outside the Oakland restaurant Pierre Pierre.
It is this satchel that Pittman was accused of wearing days earlier in the gun fight.
Pittman’s boss at the now-shuttered eatery, notorious for customers being hit by gunfire, was owner Cleashawn Hill. Hill was described by prosecutors as “an associate of the Big Block street gang in San Francisco” and Pittman’s probation terms forbade him from being in his company.
The June 23 2024 shooting that was the focus of much of today’s hearing took place outside a community basketball game in Oakland at 44th and Linden Streets.
Footage from security cameras overlooking the scene shows a man prosecutors say is Pittman appear to shoot a man in the leg.
That wounded man retreats, draws his own gun and returns fire.
The shooter and associates scatter before firing haphazardly at their original target who leaps into a car which speeds away.
Robert Ortega, who was not involved in the incident, gets out of a parked car and is immediately shot at.
Seconds later the shooter opens fire on Ortega again and he collapses to the ground. The shooter then speeds away in a vehicle with his accomplices.
Another of those present, say prosecutors, was Shunnee King – who had been granted compassionate release eight months earlier having been convicted of child sex trafficking in 2008.
He had pimped a 14-year-old girl and beaten a man about the head so badly his eye had to be removed by surgeons.
Pittman’s storied criminal history includes a 2011 conviction for discharging a firearm, a 2013 conviction for accessory after the fact, bribing a witness and witness intimidation and a 2022 federal conviction for firearms possession after being found with a machine gun while on parole.
In 2021, while also on parole and wearing an ankle monitor, he committed a string of armed residential burglaries in San Francisco’s Taraval and Ingleside districts.
In 2016 Pittman was acquitted by a San Francisco jury of the murder of Otto Brown, shot to death in the city’s Hunters Point neighborhood in 2013. The same jury deadlocked as to his guilt in the 2010 shooting murder of Deon Jackson.
Today in courtroom 5 of Oakland federal courthouse, Judge White imposed a 57 month sentence for gun possession and 24 months for probation violations, to run consecutively.
“Your behavior is very recidivistic,” said the judge. “It is very repetitive, serious criminal behavior involving firearms and, most recently, the crime you stand before the court convicted of, not only involves a firearm and ammunition, but a high capacity magazine, whose sole purpose is to injure and destroy other human beings.”
He did stress that, having looked closely at the 2024 shooting video, he would not take into account prosecutors’ insistence that Pittman was the culprit.
“I will say it is quite possible that the defendant was the shooter,” said the judge. “There may even be probable cause. However I don’t believe that the evidence submitted by the government makes it more likely than not that the defendant was the perpetrator.”
The court was told Pittman does not face state charges arising from the incident.
“I want to apologize, your honor, to you,” Pittman told the judge. “I have taken full responsibility for my actions. I am tired of failure. I am a family man, I am a husband and a father…and every single day I am striving to become a better man in all aspects of life.”
The court was told that Pittman had been a volunteer at UCSF Medical Center. A spokesman for UCSF did not respond to written inquiries about the nature of Pittman’s volunteering and whether he was permitted access to patients or other vulnerable people.
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