Two men have been found guilty in the 2013 killing of a 66-year-old Oakland woman, Judy Salamon, who was known to neighbors as an anti-crime activist. KRON 4 reports it is believed that Salamon was filming the men, who may or may not have been committing a crime at the time, when they initially confronted her.
Twenty-five-year-old Stephon Lee was convicted of shooting Salamon, and 24-year-old Mario Floyd was convicted of stealing her phone.
According to CBS 5, this all went down on the 2400 block of Fern Street in Oakland’s Maxwell Park neighborhood in the middle of the day. On July 24, 2013, prosecutors claim the men got into an argument with Salamon after they noticed her recording them. It was then, prosecutors say, that Lee shot her in the head — and Floyd took her phone as she lay bleeding on the street.
Salamon had been known to be critical of the Oakland Police Department, and was looking into the possibility of hiring private security for her neighborhood.
The jury found the men "guilty of murder and the special circumstance of committing a murder during a robbery," and convicted Lee on the additional charge of "possession of a firearm by a felon."
On top of the obvious tragedy of the murder, this case also brought to light a problem with the Oakland Police Department's body-camera system. A defense attorney for one of the men charged in the killing asked police for footage from when officers arrived on the scene only to be told it didn't exist — it turns out OPD had accidentally deleted 25 percent of all body cam footage during a system upgrade.
The two men face a maximum sentence of life without the possibility of parole, and will be sentenced by a judge later this year.
Previously: Trial Begins For Pair Accused In Murder Of 66-Year-Old Oakland Woman Who May Have Been Filming Them