OAKLAND — A San Leandro man was given probation for his role in a 2023 mass shooting that killed a teen and left six others wounded, court records show.
Brian Cruz, 23, was initially charged with murder, illegal gun possession, and six counts of assault with a firearm. But in a plea deal with Alameda County prosecutors, all those charges were dropped. Cruz instead pleaded no contest to accessory after the fact, formally receiving one day worth of jail time and two years of probation in return, court records show.
The shooting took place during a crowded music video shoot for the Stockton-based rapper Acito, described by police as a Norteño-affiliated rapper whose rivals, the Sureños, showed up and began shooting. Police testified that Cruz identified three suspected Sureños as shooters, admitted to passing an AK rifle to one of them, according to court records.
The three gang members allegedly showed up at the shoot, where numerous Norteños were present. The two groups engaged in a shootout. An 18-year-old man named Mario Navarro-Navarro was killed, and six others survived gunshot wounds, including a woman who was shot in the chest and a man who survived a wound to the neck. No one other than Cruz was charged, court records show.
Cruz was arrested weeks after the Jan. 23, 2023 shooting, and spent more than two years behind bars while the charges were pending. The plea deal was finalized in May, court records show.
A similar deal was in the works last year, and Cruz even pleaded no contest to accessory in July 2024 with the expectation of receiving the probation term. But then, in August 2024, prosecutors came into court, rejected their own deal, and essentially restarted the case from square one, court records show. The DA’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment explaining the moves last year.
Cruz’s murder prosecution continued. At his preliminary hearing last February, police testified that Cruz identified three alleged gang members who showed up to the video shoot with him, but insisted he believed that they were there to challenge rival gang members to a fight, not to shoot them.
“After the shooting he informed us that everyone entered the vehicle and everyone was very amped,” Oakland police Det. Roland Aguilar testified. “They were excited of the fact that they might have killed someone, shot someone, may have hurt a rival in opposition and things like that.”
Navarro-Navarro was at the music video shoot with friends, who decided to watch after learning on social media that a well-known rapper would be coming to town, to shoot a music video at the Valero gas station on Seminary Avenue at MacArthur Boulevard. One of Navarro-Navarro’s friends testified they were there as onlookers and had no idea that the block had erupted in gunfire until after more than a half-dozen shots rang out.
“I thought, someone famous is coming to Oakland and that never happens,” Navarro-Navarro’s friend Pedro Martinez testified. When he first heard gunfire, “I thought it was fireworks, like, a block away to be honest.”
Chaos followed. Then Martinez learned that his friend had been shot. He and another friend, Luis Ramos, made their way to the gas pumps, where they found their friend.
“A lot of blood started coming out of his mouth. I didn’t see where he was hit. I just seen a lot of blood coming from his mouth,” Ramos testified.
Neither of Navarro-Navarro’s friends gave any indication they ever saw who the shooter was, nor did they identify anyone as a suspect. They testified about attempting to call 911 for help, then when they were unable to reach a dispatcher, they dragged their friend into a car and rushed him to a hospital.
When they got to a hospital, “police were there and they drew guns on us at first they had to make sure we had no weapons or nothing in the vehicle,” said Ramos in court.
“And then that’s when they took Mario, after they had separated us from the car,” he added.
At the hearing’s end, Cruz’s lawyer, Darryl Billups, said that based on the evidence his client was “an accessory” at most. Judge Thomas Reardon said Cruz sounded “more like a classic aider and abettor as a getaway driver to this incident,” for the purpose of a preliminary hearing, which as a low legal threshold. The prosecutors, Deputy District Attorney Matt Delbridge, said Cruz allegedly passing a gun to one of the suspected shooters made him liable.
“What we have here is a horrible, horrible situation. We have my client who finds himself unfortunately to be associating with people who are ruthless for lack of a better word,” Billups argued in court, but later added, “He’s not a shooter.”
