BART, East Bay parks police looking into separate homicides in Oakland
BART police and East Bay Regional Park District police were continuing Wednesday to investigate separate homicides that occurred around the same time Tuesday afternoon in downtown and East Oakland, authorities said.
Both victims were killed by gunfire. BART police later reported making an arrest in their case.
The park district homicide happened around 2:20 p.m. at the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline boat launch on Doolittle Drive, near the Oakland International Airport, EBRPD spokesperson Jen Vanya said. Oakland and park district police officers arrived to find a male victim dead from a gunshot wound.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the name of the victim had not been released. Park police also did not announce any arrests or a possible motive in the killing.
Ten minutes later, at 2:30 p.m., a victim was shot dead
at a street-level entrance to the Lake Merritt BART Station near a bus zone, a BART spokesperson said.
A male suspect was arrested within an hour and a half of the shooting, with the help of “surveillance images,” BART said in a social media post. He was identified by police and jail records as Juan Andes Martinez, 45, of Oakland; he was being held without bail at Santa Rita Jail. There was no indication the victim or the suspect was a rider, the agency said.
A BART spokesman said Wednesday authorities are trying to confirm the identity of the man killed, who appeared to be between 35 and 40. Police are not yet releasing a motive for the killing or saying if the two men knew each other.
The Lake Merritt station was briefly closed, but all trains were running normally through it by 4 p.m. The entrance to the station at Eighth and Oak streets remained closed because of the investigation, according to BART.