Driver agrees to 13-year term for hit-and-run death of woman

Mother of 7 killed in '20 as she crossed a street to pick up a child from school

Prosecutors and defense attorneys have reached a plea agreement over the 2020 hit-and-run crash that killed a mother of seven children as she crossed the street to pick up a child from school, court records show.

Henry Melendez, 30, pleaded no contest to manslaughter in the death of 40-year-old Miesha Singleton, a San Leandro resident and anti-violence activist, and has agreed to a 13-year prison term. Singleton was in a crosswalk and on her way to pick up her child from Elmhurst United Middle School on the 1800 block of 98th Avenue in East Oakland, when Melendez drove a white Nissan into her and kept going, authorities said.

Authorities say he then hit a car at Plymouth Street and 98th Avenue, and drove away from that crash as well.

Melendez originally was charged with voluntary manslaughter, but the Alameda County district attorney upgraded the charges to murder in 2021. The murder charge was dismissed as part of the plea deal, court records show.

In the second crash, a passenger snapped photos of Melendez's Nissan Maxima that were later used to identify him as a suspect, police said. Police determined Melendez lived at 88th Avenue in Oakland and reviewed surveillance video that showed him driving recklessly on other occasions, according to a probable cause statement filed in court.

Police obtained a warrant to arrest Melendez in May 2020, but he wasn't arrested until days after police put out his mug shot and publicly identified him as a wanted suspect. He was taken into custody by U.S. Marshals in Los Angeles on May 18 and extradited to Santa Rita Jail in Dublin in July of that year, court records show.

Melendez remains in the jail, pending a sentencing hearing. After that, he'll be transferred into the state prison system. He gets credit for the time he spent in pretrial detention while the case was pending.