A 33-year-old man from Stockton has been charged with the November 11 murder and attempted robbery of 22-year-old Devani Aleman Sanchez, on a street next to Lake Merritt — and he's been connected to multiple other armed robberies.
Oakland police on Thursday announced the arrest of Lashawn Price of Stockton, and he has been charged with Aleman Sanchez's murder. As Bay Area News Group reports, there may have been other suspects involved in the attempted robbery, but Price is believed to have been the gunmen who fired the shot that killed Aleman Sanchez. The charging documents say that Price "personally and intentionally" fired his weapon in the gunfight that ensued during the attempted robbery.
The killing of Aleman Sanchez came during a violent month in a very violent year in Oakland. And it occurred on a block — the 1400 block of Lakeshore Avenue — that has seen multiple separate shootings in the past year, and on a day when another shooting, hours earlier, injured a young concertgoer outside the Fox Theater in a nearby part of the city.
On Christmas Eve, Oakland marked its 134th homicide of the year, and this also occurred on this same block of apartments, along the shore of Lake Merritt.
Price, the suspect in the Nov. 11 fatal shooting of Aleman Sanchez, is also suspected in an armed robbery on the 1800 block of Myrtle Street on December 5. In that incident, a man and a woman were robbed at gunpoint of jewelry and cash.
On December 6, per Bay City News Group via the OPD, Price and another suspect are believed to have committed another armed robbery at 21st Avenue and Foothill Boulevard.
Price was commuting from Stockton to commit these alleged crimes, according to police. He was arrested Tuesday, December 28, at a home in Stockton, and he was found in possession of "a loaded handgun and a loaded assault weapon" that were also linked to the robberies.
He's being held at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin pending an arraignment on Monday.
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