Killer takes 8-year plea deal in 2022 Southwest Berkeley shooting

Claudel Moore, shown in his 2022 booking photo, pleaded no-contest to voluntary manslaughter in Josh Fisher’s death. Credit: BPD

An Antioch man is headed to state prison for killing a Southwest Berkeley man in 2022 over what court records indicate was a $600 debt.

Claudel Moore, 66, was sentenced to eight years Monday, with credit for about half that for the nearly four years he has already spent at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin. He’s been there ever since his arrest in 2022 after fatally shooting 47-year-old Anthony Joshua “Josh” Fisher III in the middle of Seventh Street outside Fisher’s apartment building near Allston Way.

Fisher spent the evening of March 4, 2022, trying to scrounge up the cash that court records would later show he owed to Moore. Moore felled him with a single shot to the head — which Fisher’s mother and younger brother could hear from inside their apartment — leaving Fisher lying in the middle of the street, to die four days later at a local hospital.

Berkeley detectives arrested Moore at a Pinole Motel 6 the same day Fisher died.

The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office initially charged Moore with murder and gun crimes, allegations he denied. Judge Scott Patton ordered Moore held to answer last March. But in January, prosecutors and Moore’s public defender instead hammered out an agreement under which Moore pleaded no-contest to voluntary manslaughter with an enhancement related to his previous felony convictions.

At Moore’s sentencing hearing Monday, Fisher’s relatives and friends filled several rows of Superior Court Judge Rozlynn Silvaggio’s courtroom. Some of them wore custom purple-and-white T-shirts festooned with Fisher’s name and likeness. Fisher’s daughter Imani and another family member gave statements.

“His murder did not just end his life. It shattered our family forever,” Imani Fisher said, fighting back sobs. “An eight-year sentence does not reflect the gravity of the choice to purposely take his life. Eight years cannot account for the life my father was denied.”

Mario Fox, who had known Fisher since their teen years and married one of his sisters, excoriated Moore in court for the “cowardly” killing. “As Black men, we should be able to talk to each other face-to-face,” Fox said Monday. “This senseless killing is ridiculous.”

As Fisher’s family spoke, Moore kept his eyes mostly on Silvaggio’s bench, leaning against the barrier of the defendant’s dock with one arm. He wore a yellow jail jumpsuit over a long-sleeved white T-shirt. He had a shaved scalp, a short white beard and spectacles.

Silvaggio acknowledged Fisher’s family’s pain, and said the sentence reflected “the likelihood of success from the people’s perspective,” not the immeasurable loss Fisher’s killing had wrought.

“I would love to believe that this could be a place of great healing, or that people could leave satisfied,” Silvaggio said. “But the reality is, when you have love like that, that’s bigger than anything this court has jurisdiction over.”

Silvaggio sent Moore back to Santa Rita, pending transfer to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, at the end of Monday’s hearing.

Neither he nor anyone else said anything on his behalf.

Josh Fisher wrote poetry and rap lyrics
Anthony Joshua “Josh” Fisher was shot March 4, 2022, and died four days later. His killed was sentenced to eight years in prison. Credit: GoFundMe

Growing up in Hayward, Josh Fisher played football and baseball, his mother, Cheryl, told Berkeleyside in a phone interview Sunday.

“For 25 years we were a normal, two-parent family,” she said. She worked as a clinical and medical assistant at the former Cowell Memorial Hospital; Fisher’s father worked as a barber in San Jose. “We had a vegetable garden, fruit trees in the backyard, and used frogs instead of chemicals to keep the insects away. We had a dog, a golden labrador retriever named Nugget. It wasn’t bad until later.”

Cheryl Fisher said her son’s personality began to shift once his father moved out of their home in Hayward. Josh “was a sensitive soul, and he didn’t want to be,” she said. “He went from writing poetry — he used to write beautiful poetry — to writing rap lyrics and putting into the music business.”

When he was still in high school, his mother sent him to live with his father in Modesto, thinking it would help keep him off the drugs he had started using. He later lived with a longtime girlfriend, though when that relationship fell apart, he moved to Berkeley with his mother, who had already relocated there.

After briefly living in Sacramento, before his marriage to a different woman similarly disintegrated, Fisher came back to Berkeley again, around five years before he was killed, his mother said.

“He came back really broken,” his mother told Berkeleyside. “He told me that he was using drugs, and I didn’t doubt.” He stayed in his room composing quite a bit, she said, but remained a brilliant home chef, riffing on posole (he called his version “bro-sole”) or his favorite thing to cook late at night, steak. “Smoke detectors in all the rooms would go off, we had to open all the doors and the windows, but the steak tasted like he cooked it on a barbecue pit, it was so good,” she said.

Fisher’s mother heard the ‘pop’ of the gunfire that killed her son

Moore had come around their Seventh Street apartment from time to time for at least several months before killing her son, Cheryl Fisher said.

On March 4, 2022, Josh Fisher asked his mother if he could borrow $600, though he did not say why.

“I told him I couldn’t give it to him because all I had was the rent,” his mother said. “He said, ‘I understand,’ and ‘it’s OK.’” Josh told his mother he was going to see if a friend would loan him the money and he walked out of their apartment for the last time.

Roughly an hour later, she said, Moore and an associate came by looking for Josh; moments after Moore left, Cheryl Fisher said, she heard the distinctive “pop” of gunfire. “I just knew it when I heard the pop,” she said. Josh’s brother Hassan went out on the family’s balcony to look — their apartment faced the road where Josh was shot — and his mother heard Hassan start to scream before he tore downstairs and outside to try to resuscitate his brother, who was lying on Seventh Street.

Medics took Josh Fisher to Highland Hospital. He lingered for several days but without ever showing signs of brain activity. He died March 8, marking Berkeley’s first homicide in over a year.

At the sentencing Monday, Fisher’s daughter said she lives with constant nightmares, waking up screaming and soaked in sweat. The sounds of fireworks or gunshots on television drive her instantly to tears and tremors.

“Claudel Moore, you have ruined my life forever. I will never be the same. I’m not going to sit here and say my dad was perfect, but he was mine,” Imani Fisher said.

Killer takes 8-year plea deal in 2022 Southwest Berkeley shooting

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