OAKLAND — An Oakland man was convicted of murder for fatally shooting someone who he insisted to police was part of a drug cartel that had been following him for years.
Ginrhic Bernandino-Santiago, 26, was convicted of second degree murder and shooting into an occupied car in the Aug. 8, 2023 incident at the parking lot of the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline in Oakland. In a police interrogation, Bernandino-Santiago would later admit to the shooting but claim he knew that the victim, 59-year-old Francisco Torres-Felix, was a cartel member who was about to pull a gun on him.
“I’ve been followed around for a lot of years,” Bernandino-Santiago explained to East Bay Regional Parks District police interrogators after the shooting. He later added, “I was watching my rear view every time I would be around because I feel like people following me around for no reason … There’s a lot of Mexicans following me around, even at jobs, walking around.”
Despite the outlandish nature of his claim, certain details about the shooting were either astonishing coincidences or indicators that there may have been more to the story. Police have revealed no known connections between the two men and defense attorneys argued they were strangers. But Torres-Felix had served a lengthy federal prison sentence for drug trafficking, stemming from a $1 million cocaine bust in 2007 that involved a drug ring with ties to suppliers in Mexico, court records show.
An unserialized gun was also found in Torres-Felix’s car, but prosecutors contend it was wedged between the seats and not easily accessible. Torres-Felix’s final phone communications were with a woman he knew; he said that he was at the shoreline to take his dog for a walk, and noted that it was “hot” in the area. A few minutes later, he was fatally shot, after he and Bernandino-Santiago’s cars pulled alongside each other and there was a brief exchange, according to court filings.
In 2024, the prosecution was put on hold after Bernandino-Santiago’s lawyer declared a doubt to his mental competency, but things picked up after he was found competent for trial.
For their part, Bernandino-Santiago’s public defenders argued that the shooting was self-defense based on Bernandino-Santiago’s perceptions, arguing in a pretrial hearing that a white person who did the exact same thing wouldn’t have been charged. Bernandino-Santiago told police that he believed a cartel had a grudge against his family because his father was a policeman in the Philippines.
The defense objected to prosecutors using a picture of Torres-Felix smiling, arguing that this would give jurors the impression he wasn’t part of a cartel, and that prosecutors use “racially coded” phrases like “drive-by shooting,” because it would imply gang membership on Bernandino-Santiago’s part. They also called a professor — an expert on cartel symbols — to testify about a knight symbol found at Torres-Felix’s home and its possible link to the Sinaloa Cartel, court records show.
On April 13, jurors returned their verdict, convicting the defendant.