When 27-year-old Antonio Ramos was shot and killed in late September while painting a community anti-violence mural under an Interstate 580 overpass in West Oakland, the motive was totally, woefully unclear. Following the arrest of the alleged killer, Marquise Holloway, 20, of Oakland, that motive appears to have been robbery — the painter had camera equipment — and the murder weapon appears to have been stolen from a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officer's car, CBS SF reports. "The theft was properly reported to local authorities and through official federal channels” the agency says.
“He was painting the mural and he had taken a break and was taking some pictures so he could memorialize it and put it up on the website, so he had some of his camera equipment out there,” Roland Holmgren of the Oakland Police told CBS SF, “I believe that’s what sparked the whole incident.”
In court, Holloway reportedly shouted "Fuck that! Fuck that!" as he struggled with officers according to the Chronicle. Holloway is a suspected serial robber whose crimes didn't stop with the suspected murder. He's also been fingered in back-to-back gunpoint robberies in Oakland that took place on the first of October.
As ABC 7 reports, a law enforcement officer reported their car had been broken into on September 13th and a gun stolen at 2nd and South Park in San Francisco. That could be, but hasn't been confirmed as, the weapon that killed Ramos.
Marquise Holloway arraigned on charges of murdering muralist Antonio Ramos..he began to scream obscenities! pic.twitter.com/RGTBiTXBFM
— carolyn tyler (@ctylerabc7) November 24, 2015
It's impossible not to be reminded of the other recent murders in the Bay Area committed with weapons stolen from vehicles in strikingly similar fashion. Kate Steinle, for instance, killed at Pier 14, was murdered with a weapon stolen from a Bureau of Land Management agent's car parked downtown. Later, a group of "lost souls" on a crime spree allegedly obtained the weapon they used to kill both a backpacker in Golden Gate Park and a hiker in Marin from the car of a civilian gun owner at Fisherman's Wharf. As recently as October 20th, SFist reported on another cop's weapon being stolen from their car.
SF Supervisor David Campos has called this an "epidemic," and he's proposed a new law that would make it a crime to leave an unsecured gun in one's vehicle.
Previously: Oakland Police Make Arrest In The Killing Of Muralist Antonio Ramos
Local Artist Shot And Killed While Working On Anti-Violence Mural In West Oakland
