Sept. 2 shooting of 43-year-old Robert Abeyta<\/a>, a Rodeo resident shot during an early morning fight outside a store on the 3800 block of San Pablo Avenue in Emeryville. Landry still faces charges of being an accessory after the fact \u2014 a felony \u2014 and leading police on a brief chase, a misdemeanor, records show<\/p>\nLandry\u2019s co-defendant, 52-year-old Armand Watson, is charged with murder and gun possession. Police say that during a fight outside the store, Watson responded to a threat by Abeyta by saying, \u201cyou\u2019re going to kill who?\u201d then shooting Abeyta in the head. Landry then allegedly stomped on Abeyta\u2019s head after he was fatally shot.<\/p>\n
Both men were charged with murder, but at a November preliminary hearing, Judge Thomas Reardon said there wasn\u2019t enough evidence to uphold Landry\u2019s murder charge and threw it out. He released Landry from jail the same day but gave him a 6 p.m. curfew. Both men pleaded not guilty on Nov. 26 and are next due in court in January, records show.<\/p>\n
At the hearing, police and an eyewitness testified to Abeyta\u2019s aggressive, racist behavior before the shooting. About a half-hour he was killed, he threatened a Black woman and called her racist slurs several times for walking too closely to his car, she testified. Landry\u2019s attorney said he also made \u201cmonkey sounds\u201d at her.<\/p>\n
Later, Abeyta told Landry, \u201cget the (expletive) out of here,\u201d and then added a racial slur during the confrontation. Landry and Watson were at the store together to buy cigarettes when they began arguing with Abeyta, police testified. The entire thing was caught on security cameras at the store.<\/p>\n
At first, Landry told Watson and Abeyta to \u201cbreak it up\u201d when they began to go back and forth. During the confrontation, Abeyta threatened the men, and reached for his waistband. Watson later told police he thought Abeyta had a knife, but police say he didn\u2019t actually have one.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors argued that Watson appeared \u201ccalm\u201d and methodically retrieved his gun from his car and killed Abeyta. They argued in court that Landry\u2019s \u201csupport played a key role in emboldening Mr. Watson to repeatedly shoot the victim in this case\u201d and that him stomping on Abeyta\u2019s head after the shooting showed incredible \u201ccallousness.\u201d<\/p>\n
Abeyta was pronounced dead from gunshot wounds at a hospital later that morning. A pathologist determined the head stomps didn\u2019t play a role in his death, police testified.<\/p>\n
During police questioning, Landry said he regretted that Abeyta was killed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t trying to kill the man,\u201d Landry said, adding that he \u201cwould not do that over a simple argument,\u201d an Emeryville police detective testified.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EMERYVILLE \u2014 A murder charge has been dismissed against one of two men arrested in a deadly shooting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[861,59207,59208,143,145,144,59205,59206],"class_list":["post-110423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-bay-area-crime","tag-emeryville-murder","tag-emeryville-shooting","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-robert-abeyta","tag-robert-abeyta-assault"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}