Jury convicts shooter, acquits alleged getaway driver in 2016 gang killing

A San Mateo County jury on Wednesday convicted a San Leandro man of killing a rival gang member in 2016, but acquitted the alleged getaway driver in the crime of charges related to the deadly shooting, prosecutors said.

A jury found Alejandro DeLeon, 24, guilty of second- degree murder on the third day of deliberations, following a lengthy trial for the killing of Daniel Corona, a 31-year- old man who authorities said DeLeon shot to death outside a San Mateo PetSmart store in September 2016.

DeLeon was also found guilty of being a felon in possession of a firearm and not guilty of shooting from a vehicle, according to the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office.

DeLeon, who faces up to 43 years to life in prison, ripped off his tie and yelled an obscenity in the courtroom after the verdicts were read, prosecutors said.

Louis Mercado, a 23-yearold Hayward man who prosecutors had alleged confronted Corona along with DeLeon and then drove DeLeon away from the scene after the shooting, was found not guilty of murder and of shooting from a vehicle.

But jurors did find Mercado guilty of felony evading, for leading San Mateo police and California Highway Patrol officers on a chase up the Peninsula and into San Francisco when they tried to stop his car soon after the shooting, the District Attorney’s Office said. Mercado and DeLeon were arrested at the end of that chase.

Prosecutors said DeLeon and Mercado were both gang members who had gotten in a dispute with Corona.

California lawmakers recently raised the legal standards prosecutors must meet to convict alleged accomplices of murder if the person did not commit the actual killing.

Sentencing hearings for DeLeon and Mercado will be scheduled later this month.