OAKLAND — The suspect in the 2024 killing of a popular auto shop owner has been sentenced to 21 years in a plea deal, according to court records.
Robert Leigh Moore, 35, of Oakland, was sentenced after pleading no contest to voluntary manslaughter, and transferred to North Kern State Prison on March 19, records show. Moore was originally charged with murder but prosecutors dropped that count as part of the deal.
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Moore shot and killed 68-year-old Aristeo Zambrano inside Bay City Alternators, the auto shop on International Boulevard that Zambrano owned. A customer later found Zambrano, dead behind the counter. At Moore’s 2025 preliminary hearing an witness testified he heard the shooter yell “you sold me a (expletive) bad battery” during an argument outside the shop.
The shooting occurred on Feb. 3, 2024.
The witness, who was waiting for food at a taco truck across the street, said he didn’t get a good look at the shooter and that he was a family friend of the Zambranos. He referred to the shooter only as “the gentleman” and that after the two men went inside the store, he heard two “loud pops” he could identify as gunshots.
The “gentleman” then tore out of the store without even bothering to close the hood of his car, he testified.
“He ran to his car. He got in his car. And seemed weird to me. Because he backed out real quick and he left,” the man testified. “He left in a hurry…you could hear the tires screech.”
Zambrano, a former United Farm Workers advocate, was declared dead inside the store before he could be taken to a hospital, according to police.
Moore’s lawyer had argued at the hearing that the police search of the store was “wholly inadequate” and signaled there was a possibility of arguing self-defense at trial. The prosecution argued that Zambrano was “unarmed” and gunned down by an angry customer whose face was seen on surveillance footage outside the store.
At the preliminary hearing, Brentwood police Officer Kathryn Reymundo — a former Oakland police investigator — testified she was confident police did a thorough search of the business, but admitted police returned to the store three days after the shooting and found firearm that hadn’t been located in the initial search. Deputy District Attorney Sean Flynn, who prosecuted the case, said the gun was found around the corner from where Zambrano was shot and he didn’t have access to it.
When asked directly by Moore’s lawyer, Reymundo said she couldn’t recall whether any of Zambrano’s loved ones said he kept a gun under the counter for self-defense. At the preliminary hearing’s end, Judge Amy Sekany upheld the charges after noting that she’d watched video allegedly depicting Moore outside the store “not once but twice.”
Moore was given about 615 days worth of credit for time he spent in jail while the case was pending, court records show.