OAKLAND — While the city’s police department is still working to arrest suspects in the March 7 mass shooting that killed two people and wounded five, Alameda County’s probation department is taking legal action against one of the surviving victims, court records show.
Eric Conley Jr., 23, was shot in the foot at the early-morning shooting and later treated at a hospital. Now, his probation officer has served him with probation violation papers and asking a judge to send Conley back on house arrest, citing a rap video where a masked Conley brandishes “what appears to be a firearm” and his failure to meet with a probation officer last February. The violation petition also mentions Conley’s presence at the EZ Lounge and that he was wounded.
A judge will review the petition on April 2, court records show.
Conley, an Antioch resident who police say goes by the nickname “Poodah,” filmed the video for the song “I’m back out” roughly three weeks after he was released from jail in a sexual assault case. During a video meeting, he told his probation officer that he was holding a “toy gun,” the petition says.
In 2024, Conley was charged with rape, forcible oral copulation, forcible sodomy and unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, but took a plea deal that allowed his release from jail last January, accepting a conviction for a lesser offense of assault likely to produce great bodily injury, court records show. The more serious charges were dropped through the deal. Conley’s probation in that case is set to expire in 2027.
Authorities have said in court filings that Conley is affiliated with the same gang as one of the shooting victims, Markise Martin, 25, of Oakland. Both men were arrested in a large-scale 2021 joint operation dubbed Operation Windstar, which charged feuding members of Case and Acorn street gangs. Only Martin was charged in that operation, and his attempted murder case was dropped when defense attorneys raised concerns about Antioch investigators who’d been involved in the department’s racist texting scandal, and after federal prosecutors learned another Antioch officer had interfered with a wiretap operation, court records show.
A middle school teacher, Latetia Bobo, 33, of Richmond, was also shot and killed in the incident. On Tuesday, members of her family publicly called for “change” in light of her death, but repeatedly declined to say what new policies they’ll champion.
As for Conley, his probation petition describes a life of hardship, including suffering “significant emotional impact” from the loss of his father in 2023, and that his brother, Nicholas Harris, was sentenced to life in prison for a gang-related double murder in West Oakland, in 2012. Harris was tried as an adult despite being 17 when he shot Edward Hampton, 17, and Nario Jackson, 18, at the Acorn project housing development in West Oakland, in 2010, court records show.