Fairfield man gets 9 years in shooting

In a plea deal, a 24-yearold Fairfield man accused of fatally shooting one person and wounding another at a Fairfield gas station in 2019 was sentenced Tuesday to nine years in state prison for voluntary manslaughter and assault with a deadly weapon likely to cause great bodily injury, The Reporter has learned.

Souljah Devon Corbin, who also admitted to using a firearm to commit the crimes, heard Judge Robert Bowers formally hand down the sentence during a 9 a.m. hearing in Department 15 in the Justice Building in Vallejo.

Corbin's attorney, Amy F. Morton of Vallejo, could not be reached for comment earlier this week.

During previous proceedings in Department 9 in Fairfield, Corbin also faced a robbery-with-special-circumstances charge and a probation violation, but at the time Morton said that a separate case of those 2018 charges would be folded into the murder and attempted murder cases.

The Solano County District Attorney's Office filed its complaint in the robbery case Nov. 27, 2018, and a complaint about the murder and attempted murder June 4, 2019.

With the plea deal, Corbin avoided a jury trial and the possibility of being found guilty and facing more than four decades in prison for the crimes, all felonies.

At his jail arraignment in June 2019 in the Justice Center in Fairfield, he pleaded not guilty to the charges, and the case was later transferred to the Vallejo courthouse.

During a brief interview with The Reporter after Corbin's initial arraignment, Morton said she believed the case was one of self-defense.

Court records indicate that just before midnight June 2, 2019, officers responded to a report of people fighting and shots being fired at the ARCO station at North Texas Street and Alaska Avenue. Upon arrival, officers found two gunshot victims, one of whom was later pronounced dead. The other was transported to a local hospital with lifethreatening injuries.

A local hospital later notified police that a man with a nonlife-threatening gunshot wound, later identified as Corbin, had apparently walked into a local emergency room. After confirming his alleged involvement in the shooting, police arrested him.

The deceased victim was identified as Lavell James, 30, of Fairfield, and the shootings were not a random act of violence, police investigators said.