New trial date pending for pair charged with 2018 fatal shooting
A Solano County Superior Court judge vacated a May jury trial and plans to reset it in a felony case against two men charged with a 2018 fatal shooting in Vallejo.
Daniel Anthony Street, 36, and Costello Blackwell, 47, who on March 25 appeared in Department 1 for proceedings in advance of their previously scheduled May 11 trial, heard Judge Jeffrey C. Kauffman instead schedule them for a new trial setting at 9 a.m. June 21 in the Justice Center in Fairfield.
Blackwell, of Vallejo, in an earlier trial was convicted and sentenced for trying to kill a potential witness. He received 52 years to life for attempted murder.
He and Street remain in Solano County Jail custody, accused of the Feb. 10, 2018, murder of Daryl Huckaby, 47.
Defense attorney Terry Ray represents Street, a former Hercules resident. Defense attorney David Nelson represents Blackwell.
Deputy District Attorney Bill Ainsworth leads the prosecution.
Blackwell was found guilty in March 2020 for trying to kill Teiquon Cortez, 29 at the time, on Nov. 5, 2018, also in Vallejo.
During the attempted murder trial, Cortez said he witnessed Blackwell, a co-worker at Vallejo moving firm Royal Transport, fire one shot from a handgun, the bullet striking and killing Huckaby, who was in an RV that later crashed on Tuolumne Street.
Months later, on Nov. 1, Blackwell reportedly went to Cortez's living quarters behind the moving company and shot him twice with a shotgun, wounding him.
During the trial, Deputy District Attorney Andrew Wood presented more than a dozen witnesses, including Vallejo police investigators, physicians, cellphone tower experts, and at least one person who aided Cortez after he was shot.
Cortez testified that he walked across the street to a Shell gas station, where, bleeding profusely from the shotgun blasts to his left elbow and back, he received first-aid before Vallejo paramedics and police officers arrived.
During court testimony, an investigator for the defense, Eugene Borghello, said Cortez told him during a Solano County Jail interview in January 2019 that Blackwell shot him twice with a shotgun for “threatening Mr. Blackwell's wife.”
Cortez also told Borghello, of the Special Investigations Group in Fairfield, that he was in a car with Blackwell when the defendant shot Huckaby.
After his attempted murder conviction, Blackwell also faced a court trial — during which the judge, not a jury, makes a final decision based on evidence and attorney arguments — on his alleged prior strikes.
It is unclear how Street is connected to Huckaby's murder.
If convicted at trial for Huckaby's death, Street and Blackwell face 25 years to life in prison on the charge, and likely more time each for prior convictions and enhancements.