Crime
17-year old Desiree Davis had spent her childhood excluded and taunted for never quite fitting in. “They gave her a real hard time her whole life,” said her mother, Dru Ann Davis, in an interview at her home this weekend. A Hurricane Katrina survivor, born blind in one eye, Desiree was working to find new strength and identity in Oakland before she was killed last week in a drive-by shooting. Story by S. Howard Bransford/Oakland North.
Desiree Davis, the 17 year-old Oakland Tech student killed in a drive-by shooting Monday, had been trapped with her family in Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters before they sought safety and a new life in California. Her uncle says they tried Santa Cruz for a while, but that Oakland had felt to them more like home.
For nearly a decade, residents living near the intersection of Gaskill and 54th Streets in Northwest Oakland enjoyed a hard-won sense of calm. They’d formed a community police group, discouraged loitering and blatant drug dealing, and a diverse group of new homeowners was infusing money into this section of town, which runs along the Emeryville border. Even the owner of the neighborhood convenience store agreed to stop selling liquor in an effort to reduce crime. Yet on Tuesday, neighbors were…
Volunteers from throughout the East Bay formed a prayer circle near a reedy lagoon called Lake Elizabeth in Fremont on Saturday morning as they gathered to undertake a grim task. The official goal of the search party—some 100 people strong—was to find the missing five-year-old Hassani Campbell, a Fremont resident who vanished sometime around August 10. Yet in their appeals to a higher power, they were already girding themselves for the chance of finishing empty-handed. “It is our prayer, Lord,…
Those who die on Oakland’s toughest avenues may get little more than a brief mention in local papers or on the nightly news, but their memories live on at Sherri-Lyn Miller’s print shop.
In an exclusive interview, Oakland attorney John Burris speaks about the recent events surrounding the Hassani Campbell case. Earlier this week the missing child’s foster parents, Jennifer Campbell and Louis Ross, were released after three days in police custody.
Citing insufficient evidence, the Alameda County District Attorney’s office cancelled an arraignment hearing for Louis Ross, jailed last week with his fiancee on suspicion of murdering five-year-old Hassani Campbell, officials said Tuesday.
Authorities have declined to charge either of the foster parents jailed last week on suspicion of murdering five-year-old Hassani Campbell, and the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office canceled a scheduled afternoon arraignment of the boy’s foster father today. The Fremont boy’s foster parents, his biological aunt Jennifer Campbell and her fiance Louis Ross, had been arrested and held last week on suspicion of murder. But Jennifer Campbell was released Monday. This afternoon, after police said there was insufficient evidence to…
The foster parents of Hassani Campbell, a five-year-old boy who went missing two weeks ago, were arrested Friday on suspicion of murder, according to Officer Jeff Thomason of the Oakland Police Department.