Police linked double homicide to gang feud; accused shooter takes plea deal

OAKLAND >> The young man suspected of fatally shooting two people in a November 2016 incident accepted a 21-year state prison term as part of a plea deal with Alameda County prosecutors this month, court records show.

Anthony Wolfe Jr., 24, pleaded no contest to two counts of voluntary manslaughter on Aug. 2 in the deaths of Hayward residents and cousins Jose Martin Hernandez, 56, and Leonides Rocha, 42. Police called the Nov. 6, 2016, double homicide the culmination in a bloody three-month conflict between two rival subsets of a Northern California street gang, which led to a large-scale wiretap investigation.

Wolfe’s co-defendant, Oscar Aguilar, 23, accepted a six-year prison term after pleading no contest to two voluntary manslaughter counts in February 2020, court records show. Wolfe is set to be formally sentenced in October.

Hayward police Sgt. Andrew Valderrama testified at Wolfe and Aguilar’s December 2019 preliminary hearing that investigators found that five open homicides in a three-month period were between rival South Hayward gangs.

That period included homicides on back-to-back days in August 2016.

Valderrama, testifying as a gang expert, called Wolfe a member and Aguilar an associate of the same South Hayward gang, based on Wolfe’s tattoos and social media pictures, and Aguilar’s knowledge of “gang politics,” like certain codes of conduct, gang signs and colors. He testified that gangs commit crimes in rivals’ territory to bolster their group’s reputation.

“It shows their cycle of viciousness, their violence, and it shows their reputation for trying to be the bigger or badder of the

gangs and it shows a big sign of disrespect to the other gang members that they’re to be feared,” he testified in December 2019.

Wolfe’s attorney, Paul Feuerwerker, argued at the preliminary hearing that prosecutors had “cherrypicked” evidence to fit their theory, which he said was based on eyewitnesses who were friends and relatives of the victims, and had a “huge, huge bias” against both defendants.

“(Prosecutors) make Mr. Wolfe the shooter, whereas the evidence is much more ambiguous on that question,” he said.

Hernandez and Rocha were hanging out in a garage near Manon Avenue and Ranker Place in Hayward, watching a Raiders game, when Wolfe and Aguilar approached them. According to prosecutors, Wolfe yelled the letters associated with his gang and said “Rest in Peace Roy,” believed to be a reference to 18-year-old Rogelio Torres II, who was shot and killed in Hayward just two months earlier.

A fight ensued, in which Wolfe shot and killed both Hernandez and Rocha, according to witness testimony, after Rocha struck Wolfe in the head with a baseball bat. When Aguilar was questioned by police, he claimed Rocha struck Wolfe as they were walking away and that Wolfe was being choked when he fired his pistol, according to the testimony of Hayward police Sgt. Oscar Riley.

Deputy district attorney Alex Hernandez, who prosecuted the case, said at the preliminary hearing that before the homicide, Aguilar and Wolfe took a picture displaying the pistol, then immediately traveled to “rival gang territory” to start a confrontation. He said Rocha used the bat in self-defense, not the other way around.

“You can’t instigate a fight and then claim selfdefense, and that’s what Mr. Wolfe and Mr. Aguilar did in this case,” Alex Hernandez said.

Aguilar’s attorney, Chris Martin, said at the hearing that the garage where both victims were watching TV was “loaded with gang graffiti,” and that Aguilar was walking away to avoid a violent conflict when the shooting occurred.

“A fight ensued, someone else pulled out a gun and fired? (Aguilar) is not responsible for that,” Martin said.

But Judge Paul Delucchi, a former Alameda County prosecutor, said the evidence indicated Wolfe was the shooter but that both men went to the area in “a fairly aggressive and hostile fashion.”

“(Aguilar) is about as deep in the soup as you can get … I think he was fully aware of what the intentions were when they went down that street and those intentions, albeit in a somewhat haphazard and slipshod manner, ultimately came to fruition,” Delucchi said.

Despite his young age, Wolfe has already been implicated in three East Bay homicides. At 18, he was charged with vehicular manslaughter in a 2015 hit and run crash that killed 28-year-old Madeleine Moore. In June 2016, he was sentenced to a year in jail and five years probation, with 355 days credit for time served, court records show.