Oakland

Oakland Man Gets 21 Years for 2012 Shooting Death of 15-Year-Old Boy

A 22-year-old man was sentenced Wednesday to 21 years in state prison for the fatal shooting of a 15-year-old boy outside a housing complex in East Oakland in July 2012.

The shooting death of Hadari Askari, who aspired to be a firefighter, in the 6700 block of Leona Creek Drive just after 8 p.m. on July 10, 2012, went unsolved for nearly three years and led to a retaliatory shooting that claimed the life of a 15-year-old girl a few blocks away five months later.

Reggie Thomas and Rodney Rederford, both now 22, were arrested in March 2015 and were charged with murder for Hadari's death.

But last Sept. 12, they both pleaded no contest to the lesser charge of manslaughter, plus an enhancement clause of using a gun.

Prosecutor Butch Ford said at the time that the resolution to the case "is appropriate given all the facts in the case."

Thomas, who authorities believe was the person who shot Hadari, was formally sentenced Wednesday by Alameda County Superior Court Judge James Cramer.

Rederford, who was an accomplice in the shooting, was sentenced to 16 years in prison in December.

A teenager who was once a suspect in the fatal shooting of Hadari testified at the preliminary hearing for Thomas and Rederford in 2016 that those two men are the ones responsible for Hadari's death.

Alameda County prosecutor Glenn Kim said at two trials in 2015 that an attempt at revenge for Hadari's shooting death led to the slaying of 15-year-old Jubrille Jordan in the 6600 block of Lion Way, near the Lion Creek Crossings apartment complex, five months later at about 3:40 p.m. on Dec. 30, 2012.

Kim said Lilron Jones, Vijay Bhushan, and Marquise Thomas were friends of Hadari and were seeking to kill a teenage boy because they thought he was the one who had killed Hadari.

One of the 20 bullets fired in the December 2012 case struck and killed Jubrille, an innocent bystander who just happened to be near the teenage boy and was in the wrong place at the wrong time, Kim said.

The teenage boy was wounded in the December 2012 shooting but survived.

Oakland police Officer Jason Anderson testified at the preliminary hearing for Thomas and Rederford that at the beginning of his investigation into Hadari's death, he considered the teenage boy to be a suspect but he no longer considered him to be one.

Jones and Bhushan were convicted in March 2015 of first-degree murder and attempted murder for Jubrille's death and Marquise Thomas was convicted of identical charges in a separate trial that ended in June 2015.

In July 2015, a judge sentenced Jones to 120 years to life in state prison, Bhushan to 34 years to life and Thompson to 32 years to life.

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