OAKLAND — Franklin Hernandez, 23, was inside a stolen white Infiniti with two men and a woman, on a quest to get his friend’s cellphone back from a drunken sex worker who’d taken it amid a money dispute, when their car was riddled with gunfire, according to witness testimony.
“I think I got hit,” Hernandez cried out when the June 3, 2022 shooting was over. The vehicles’ driver rushed them to Highland Hospital, but refused to get any closer than across the street because he was scared of being arrested on an active warrant, he would later testify. Hernandez and another man walked to the hospital, where Hernandez was pronounced dead from a wound to the abdomen hours later.
Now the alleged shooter, Roy Kali Kellum, 33, is technically headed to try on murder charges, though the case appears primed to resolve through a plea deal. Kellum’s preliminary hearing was full of questionable testimony from two men who witnessed Hernandez being shot, but claimed to not see who was inside a blue Toyota Camry firing at them. They also denied anyone from the Infiniti fired back, though Kellum’s attorney argued there was evidence at least one of the victims did.
Kellum was linked to the shooting because Oakland police connected him to the Toyota, and later found text messages between him and a woman — sent about six hours after the shooting, where she admonishes him, stating, “you don’t know how to roll windows down when you do the do.” Judge Armando Pastran Jr. said taken together, that evidence was enough to reach the low legal bar of probable cause and advance the case past a preliminary hearing.
The eyewitnesses to Hernandez’s shooting told a vivid tale. One of them testified that the day was full of very specific coincidences — he insisted he barely knew Hernandez, but happened to bump into him that day after traveling to Oakland from Seattle to work a construction job. The two decided to drink beer together, and Hernandez happened to run into a woman wearing fishnets who seemed to take a liking to him and exchange numbers, the witness testified.
Ernie Castillo didn’t seem persuaded by this story, nor the man’s repeated denials that he made plans to have sex with the woman for $100, which is what he allegedly told Oakland police, according to court records.
“So a woman walks up to your car, approaches Franklin in fishnet clothing and is flirting with him on International and you didn’t realize that this was possibly a prostitution situation going on?” Castillo asked the witness.
“No. No,” the man replied, before saying he didn’t see her full clothing during the “very brief” interaction.
Later, the pair drove to the woman’s apartment on the 2300 block of East 20th Street, but found her “very drunk” and decided to leave, the man testified. Hernandez waited in the car while the man said he denied the woman’s repeated attempts to get money from him, then took his cellphone as he walked out the door, he testified.
“She wanted money. She was actually demanding money in exchange for sex, and I said that I didn’t want to do anything with her,” he testified.
So they called their friend who just happened to have the stolen Infiniti, and agreed to drive back to the area and attempt to get the cellphone. The Infiniti’s driver testified but denied being brought in as “muscle” or that anyone in the Infiniti was armed. He said that they tried to get the phone back, without success, and that around 2 a.m. the Toyota approached.
“I noticed that there was a car with its lights off and it was approaching us. And it finally caught up to us rather quick and — well it came up right next to us and it was still shooting,” the Infiniti’s driver testified. “Frankie was hit …. he was holding his stomach and saying he got hit and I hurried up and went to the hospital as fast as I could.”
Afterwards, he returned the stolen car to the man he borrowed it from, explaining that it had been shot up, and the car was torched, the man testified. He denied having anything to do with the arson or that it was done to destroy evidence.
Kellum, who has a 2015 conviction for pimping in San Mateo, is charged with murder, attempted murder, assault, and being a felon in possession of ammunition, court records show. He remains jailed without bail while the case is pending. At the preliminary hearing’s end, his attorney argued there was “zero evidence” actually tying him to the shooting, or establishing who was inside the Toyota.
Oakland police Det. Michael Jaegger testified that he tracked down the sex worker who’d allegedly taken the cellphone, and she confirmed Kellum drove a blue Toyota Camry. She reportedly told him that on the morning after the shooting, they made plans to sell or get rid of the car.