MARTINEZ — At the start of a trial that will center on two Bay Area killings, a Hunters Point gang, rap lyrics, and a series of betrayals, prosecuting and defense attorneys gave their opening statements to jurors Wednesday.
On trial are Antioch resident Terrance Webb, 41, and Oakland resident Gale Joseph Young, 38, both charged with murdering 19-year-old Anthony Singh and shooting Singh’s friend as the two sat in an SUV parked on the 2200 block of San Jose Drive in Antioch. The Aug. 19, 2018 shooting came one month after Singh and his passenger gunned down a San Francisco resident who authorities described as a beloved Hunters Point resident and member of the same gang as both defendants.
Webb’s girlfriend, Victoria Collins, 39, is charged as an accessory for altering the appearance of her Dodge Charger, which prosecutors allege was based on her belief that the car was used Singh’s killing. But Collins’ defense attorney argued that Collins had work on the Charger done because police put Collins’ life at risk when they released video and pictures identifying her boyfriend as a murder suspect.
The trial is the first to take place in the Bay Area since the restart of Contra Costa County courts, after a two-month shutdown brought about by the coronavirus pandemic. Because of social distancing concerns, jurors sat not just in their box, but all over the courtroom gallery. Everyone wore a mask, everyone’s temperature was taken before entering the courthouse, and deputies closely monitored the seating arrangements to make sure attendees were not less than six feet apart.
Webb and Young are accused of being part of a Hunters Point gang known as Big Block or Harbor Road, though both their attorneys say their gang ties are decades-old and that both men had moved on from that life. Webb, his attorney said, was something of a talent scout in the rap world, who lived in Antioch but sought to sign rising rappers in the Hunters Point area and worked closely with the prominent rapper Prezi, whose real name is Charles Gardner.
The case focuses on Big Block’s internal investigation into the shooting death of Matthew “Higgz” Higginbotham, which occurred a month before Singh was shot. One of the only things prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed upon in their opening statements to jurors Wednesday was that Singh and his passenger on Aug. 19 were, in fact, responsible for Higginbotham’s death.
In the shooting’s aftermath, Webb and Young — and other alleged gang members — exchanged text messages and pictures identifying Singh as a suspect. Members of Big Block were also convinced that they’d been betrayed by one of their own, according to a defense attorney who even suggested that it was a Big Block member who offered Singh thousands of dollars to murder Higginbotham.
The day after Singh was killed, Gardner filmed a “celebration of death” for the victim in the Hunters Point area, deputy district attorney Christina Stevens told jurors Wednesday, displaying footage of the gathering. She said it proved — along with rap lyrics and recorded jail conversations — that there was a gang motive behind Singh’s murder.
Stevens conceded, though, that there was “no smoking gun” in her case against Webb, Young, and Collins, but rather a series of tiny puzzle pieces that she said would ultimately prove the defendants’ guilt. These include text messages, GPS pings putting Webb and Young in Antioch at the time of the killing, and grainy surveillance footage she said shows the defendants pumping gas in Antioch in the early morning hours of Aug. 19, when they noticed Singh and his passenger driving by.
The killing, Stevens said, was “one more round in the cycle of violence that has defined the Big Block gang for decades.” She said the gang formed in the 1990s and has been linked to dozens of fatal shootings, mostly attributed to rivals with adjacent neighborhood gangs.
“This pattern of retaliatory shootings runs so deep it’s very common to see the names of deceased gang members inscribed on their bodies,” Stevens said. She later added that “Webb and the rest of Big Block were outraged when Higginbotham was killed … They made short order to figure out who had done this.”
But the defense argued that police had identified Webb and Young as the killers based on a series of assumptions, and predicted that by trial’s end, the identity of Singh’s killer would remain be a mystery. Much of the evidence was either misinterpreted or in some cases never proved at all, such as the notion that Collins’ Charger was involved in the crime, the attorneys said.
Young, who goes by the nickname “Redbone,” was texting about Singh not because he wanted to avenge Higginbotham’s death, but because he had been falsely labeled as the Big Block member who set Higginbotham up, his attorney Chris Weir said. Young had a tangential family connection to Singh, which made him suspect to Big Block members, when in fact it was another man who “vouched” for Singh and allowed him to get close enough to murder Higginbotham, Weir told jurors.
Both Webb and Young’s attorneys said the police had labeled them gang members because of their youth and young adulthood, when in fact both men had moved past that stage of their lives.
“Once SFPD considers you to be a gang member, that’s it,” Weir said, later adding, “If you maintain close bonds of kinship and friendship with people in your neighborhood … that becomes an indication of gang activity.”
Collins, meanwhile, is accused of being an accessory because she took her Charger to be refitted with a vinyl covering after seeing a news report that included surveillance footage from the gas station. It was based upon a news release that had sketches of Webb and Young, along with a statement that a Dodge Charger was involved in the killing.
But the news release contained a bit of police subterfuge — the sketches of Webb and Young were purported to be from eyewitness accounts, when in fact the cops had simply sketched up Webb and Young’s drivers license pictures. In doing so, they hoped to catch the suspects talking about the crime on wiretapped calls.
Collins, therefore, refurbished her car because she was afraid of violent retaliation, not because she wanted to inhibit the police investigation, her attorney told jurors.
The case started Wednesday with the testimony of its first witness, San Francisco police Sgt. Daniel Manning. He testified about San Francisco’s various gangs, as well as the history of Big Block. He said he’d known Webb and Young since they were children.
“Back then, both Mr. Webb and I had a full head of hair,” Manning joked.
