OAKLAND — A woman has agreed to serve six years in prison for killing a man during a confrontation over boiling tensions between a home and an auto body shop across the street, court records show.
Occupants of a residence on the 1400 block of 104th Avenue were angry at the auto body shop for parking lots of cars outside, loud noises and excessive garbage. The auto body shop’s workers didn’t like how people would come by the residence to allegedly buy or sell stolen catalytic converters, according to court records.
In the end, a woman who was friends with the home’s occupants shot and killed a man known to frequent the auto body shop, according to witness testimony.
The suspected shooter, Yanira Pleitez, 37, agreed on June 23 to plead no contest to voluntary manslaughter for a six-year prison sentence. She has been released from jail while the sentencing is pending, in part due to a medical concern, and is set to be formally sentenced next year in May, court records show.
The victim, 20-year-old Jesse Ahumada, was shot and killed a little after 9:30 p.m. on Feb. 25, 2022. Pleitez would later tell police she was being confronted by Ahumada and others, who were assaulting her 20-year-old companion and attempting to drag him from the car. She fired once, striking Ahumada in the chest, according to witness testimony at her 2025 preliminary hearing.
At the hearing’s end, Judge Scott Patton upheld the murder charge. But he publicly urged Alameda County prosecutors and the defense to resolve the case, then went a step further.
“This would be much more likely to resolve a voluntary manslaughter as opposed to second degree murder,” Patton said, according to court records. “I say that because I see the family of (Ahumada) may be here in the courtroom and I’m giving them what I think to be an honest assessment of the culpability of Ms. Pleitez.”
Pleitez’s lawyer, Zachary Linowitz, said that Pleitez was threatened before she fired a shot that “you are going to get it too,” and that she wasn’t trying to kill anyone.
“Throughout the (police) interview, she repeatedly stated she felt threatened and scared,” Linowitz wrote in court filings.
Prosecutors successfully argued last February that the murder charge shouldn’t be dismissed, pointing out that Pleitez also made the dubious claim that she had accidentally fired the gun. Deputy District Attorney Danny Lau also wrote in court filings that Pleitez admitted she didn’t see any of the men with weapons, but instead claimed she knew from prior experience they were sometimes armed.