OAKLAND — A city resident is set to go on trial next month on charges that she murdered a man inside a hotel room with one other person, in a shooting she told police was motivated by fear of looming sexual violence.
Yeimy Riera, 31, told police she killed 28-year-old Martin Millan because he’d been touching her inappropriately and was blocking her exit to the hotel room they were in. It was a version of events she only offered to police after denying knowledge of what happened to Millan, but also might be difficult for prosecutors to disprove; the only other witness is an accused criminal and methamphetamine addict who drove Riera to San Francisco after the shooting, where police testified she was seen running, pantless, in a successful “escape” from his car. Further complicating things, he says he was asleep when the gun went off.
“This is a tough one,” Judge Delia Trevino lamented before upholding the murder charge against Riera on Jan. 6. “Unfortunately, I don’t think there was sufficient detail in the testimony to support a self-defense claim.”
Trevino only heard from two witnesses, both police officers, who recounted the statements Riera and another man — described by police as her boyfriend — made afterwards. Millan, the boyfriend’s cousin, was shot in the side of the head inside a hotel on Nights Inn at 874 West MacArthur Boulevard on March 21, 2024. The boyfriend told police Riera asked for a ride to San Francisco, though video shows her running frantically from his vehicle after it stops at a Shell station.
Riera told police she suspected her boyfriend and Millan were lacing her methamphetamine and sexually assaulting her when she fell asleep. She said she’d wake up with otherwise unexplained bruises and burns, and that Millan frequently groped her, made lewd gestures towards her, or touched himself inappropriately to annoy her. The day of the shooting, she said, he was blocking the only door out and appeared poised to sexually assault her again.
But prosecutors countered with these details: Riera also said that she waited with the gun pointed at Millan and considered her actions before pulling the trigger, according to Deputy District Attorney Sean Flynn. Oakland police Det. Robert Hardy testified that after Riera was arrested, she told police she was in the hotel bathroom and heard a gunshot, and couldn’t explain how Millan was killed.
Riera was released from jail in 2024, with shaky results. She has attended a drug treatment program, sporadically at times, and been ordered to stay away from her own mother after a domestic dispute last Nov. 24. Riera’s lawyer, Assistant Public Defender Jennie Otis, wrote in court filings that Riera shoved her mother who “inadvertently” fell to the ground and busted her head open, but that to a family member present, “it appeared like Yeimy was trying to get away from her mother and not trying to harm or push her to the ground.”
Riera remains out of custody, with a trial set for March 9. The only eyewitness to the shooting was arrested on Jan. 26, and remains jailed, after prosecutors filed court papers saying it appeared he was attempting to elude a District Attorney inspector and avoid having to come to court and testify.
Before the preliminary hearing was over, Trevino had parting words for Riera.
“Good luck, ma’am,” the judge said.