OAKLAND — A city police officer took the witness stand and recalled what it was like to go from a routine night on patrol to being the victim of an ambush shooting that authorities allege had no apparent motive beyond killing a cop.
Officer Khatanbaatar Batzorig was sitting in his patrol car alone, writing up a report about a stolen car blocking the road near Seminary and Kuhnle avenues around 12:30 a.m. on Feb. 1, 2025. He was so focused on his writing he didn’t notice an SUV pulling up behind him and coming to a stop. A few moments later, when gunshots rang out, Batzorig testified he didn’t fully comprehend what had happened.
“I heard a loud explosion inside my vehicle and I thought it was my fire extinguisher went off,” he testified. “And as that happened, when I looked in my life side mirror, I saw a vehicle parked right behind my patrol vehicle, and right after I heard several gunshots go off.”
Aware that he was under attack, Batzorig said he “ducked down, trying to cover my body,” and never unholstered his weapon. The SUV drove onto Interstate 580 a few moments later. When Batzorig inspected his vehicle, he found a bullet hole on the trunk that prosecutors say lined up with where he’d been seated.
Batzorig testified about this early morning shooting on Sept. 24, at the preliminary hearing for the man who prosecutors say was trying to kill him that day. He was identified as Robert Anthony Blackwell III, 36, after police say they matched him and his vehicle to surveillance footage from a nearby gas station within an hour of the shooting. The SUV, smashed and abandoned, was discovered in another part of Oakland and contained three shell casings, authorities said.
Blackwell has been charged with attempted murder and assault on an officer, but prosecutors can point to no specific motive beyond his alleged intent to kill.
Blackwell’s lawyer, Tamani Taylor, argued at the hearing that prosecutors had failed to prove basically everything. She said it wasn’t necessarily Blackwell in the gas station video, nor had the District Attorney established that it was even the same car, nor could they prove the man in the video was possessing a real firearm, as opposed to a BB gun, she argued. Even with all that, she said to call the shooting an attempted murder — which requires prosecutors prove specific intent — was “complete speculation.”
Judge Elena Condes disagreed, finding that the shooting appeared intentional and that the footage appears to implicate Blackwell.
“The court looked very carefully at the videos and expanded on the videos. I think that there’s sufficient cause to believe that Mr. Blackwell is the person in that video,” Condes said in court.
Blackwell’s trial date has not yet been set. He is next due in court on Nov. 16.
There’s another thing about Blackwell’s history that authorities believe implicates him. It’s the second time in his life he has been accused of firing at an Oakland cop. In 2015 Blackwell and another person allegedly pointed guns at an Oakland police officer who was working undercover, then shot at a patrol cop who showed up to assist the undercover officer. All that occurred during a homicide investigation, authorities said.
Blackwell later accepted a plea deal and a 10-year prison term. He was released from state prison after serving about four years. At the time of the shooting of Batzorig’s vehicle, Blackwell was out on bail with pending gun charges, court records show.