People v. Fotu CA1/5

BACKGROUND

On February 21, 2020, at approximately 4:00 p.m., officers responded to a shooting and found the victim unresponsive in the driver’s seat of a car. Efforts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful. The cause of death was a gunshot wound to the back.

1 All undesignated statutory references are to the Penal Code.

1 Officers collected video surveillance footage from various locations around the time of the shooting. The videos showed a man shooting the victim, then leaving the scene in a silver Mustang with a California license plate beginning with “4T.” Video showed the silver Mustang subsequently stopping at an address on Kirkwood Road, where the man got out. A few days later, officers identified a silver Mustang matching the car in the surveillance video, which DMV records showed was registered to appellant at the same Kirkwood Road address. When appellant was subsequently arrested at an apartment at a different location, officers found a pair of black Air Jordan shoes similar to ones worn by the shooter in the video. Text messages on appellant’s cell phone indicated he was in a romantic relationship with Sarina B. When police interviewed Sarina, they showed her portions…