Ex-Costra Costa deputy begins his prison term
Hall will be eligible for parole in 2026
Former Contra Costa County Sheriff's Deputy Andrew Hall is now inmate number BS0253 in Wasco State Prison, serving a sixyear sentence following his conviction on an assault charge in the 2018 killing of a Newark man during a car chase.
On April 21, 2021, Hall received the dubious distinction of being the county's first law enforcement professional charged in an on-duty shooting for killing 32-year-old Laudemer Arboleda during a November 2018 slow speed police chase in Danville. Almost exactly one year later, on April 22, Hall was transferred to the state prison system to begin serving his prison term.
Judge Terri Mockler formally sentenced Hall to six years on March 4, but he remained in the county jail for six weeks, records show, before being transferred to Wasco, a medium and minimum security facility with a capacity of roughly 4,000. Prison records say he will be eligible for parole starting in March 2026, though he has no scheduled date to go before the board.
The saga of Hall's prosecution started just months after Hall shot and killed Arboleda near downtown Danville while deputies were attempting to pull Arboleda over after a suspicious person call. Arboleda was attempting to drive his silver sedan between two stopped police cars when Hall ran around his own patrol SUV and fired nine times into Arboleda's car, killing him.
After being cleared by an internal probe, Hall returned to patrol in Danville. In March 2021, he
shot and killed 33-yearold Tyrell Wilson while responding to a call about someone throwing rocks at the freeway. Body camera footage shows Hall attempting to stop Wilson for jaywalking in the middle of a busy intersection and then drawing his firearm after Wilson pulls out a knife. Within seconds, Hall shoots Wilson in the head after Wilson says, “touch me and see what's up,” and steps toward Hall.
Soon after, District Attorney Diana Becton announced her office was charging Hall with manslaughter and assault in Arboleda's death. Becton blamed the 3 1/2 year delay — which critics say could have prevented Wilson's death — on her decision to “overhaul” the office's system for reviewing policerelated deaths.
Just one day before the charges were announced, Hall's boss, Sheriff David Livingston, said that Hall had been cleared in the Wilson killing and would be allowed to return to work.
Contra Costa County has since paid a total of roughly $12 million to settle civil rights suits filed by the families of both Arboleda and Wilson.
During Hall's trial, his attorneys argued he fired
at Arboleda in self defense, while prosecutors contended he escalated the relatively minor incident when other deputies were going out of their way to avoid deadly force. Jurors were unable to reach a verdict on the manslaughter charge.
In sentencing Hall, Mockler said he'd made “poor choices” that endangered others by turning Arboleda's car into an unmanned missile.
In the aftermath of the verdict, Livingston sent out an officewide email condemning the sentence, telling employees he was proud to stand by Hall and “I have your back.”
The lead prosecutor in the case, Colleen Gleason, was appointed to the bench in March.
In the history of Contra Costa, there is one other officer imprisoned for killing someone, albeit under wildly different circumstances: Eric Bergen, a 62-year-old ex-Pittsburg officer who murdered Cynthia Kempf with three others. Bergen and ex-Sgt. George Elzie were rogue officers who robbed a series of stores before kidnapping Kempf, taking her to an abandoned field and shooting her execution-style. Elzie was given leniency to testify against Bergen.