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Claudel Moore, shown in his 2022 booking photo, pleaded no-contest to voluntary manslaughter in Josh Fisher\u2019s death. Credit: BPD<\/p>\nClaudel Moore, shown in his 2022 booking photo, pleaded no-contest to voluntary manslaughter in Josh Fisher\u2019s death. Credit: BPD<\/p>\n
An Antioch man is headed to state prison for killing a Southwest Berkeley man in 2022<\/a> over what court records indicate was a $600 debt.<\/p>\n Claudel Moore, 66<\/a>, was sentenced to eight years Monday, with credit for about half that for the nearly four years he has already spent at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin. He\u2019s been there ever since his arrest in 2022 after fatally shooting 47-year-old Anthony Joshua \u201cJosh\u201d Fisher III in the middle of Seventh Street outside Fisher\u2019s apartment building near Allston Way.\u00a0<\/p>\n Fisher spent the evening of March 4, 2022, trying to scrounge up the cash that court records would later show he owed to Moore. Moore felled him with a single shot to the head \u2014 which Fisher\u2019s mother and younger brother could hear from inside their apartment \u2014 leaving Fisher lying in the middle of the street, to die four days later at a local hospital.<\/p>\n Berkeley detectives arrested Moore at a Pinole Motel 6 the same day Fisher died.<\/p>\n The Alameda County District Attorney\u2019s Office initially charged Moore with murder and gun crimes, allegations he denied. Judge Scott Patton ordered Moore held to answer last March. But in January, prosecutors and Moore\u2019s public defender instead hammered out an agreement under which Moore pleaded no-contest to voluntary manslaughter with an enhancement related to his previous felony convictions.<\/p>\n At Moore\u2019s sentencing hearing Monday, Fisher\u2019s relatives and friends filled several rows of Superior Court Judge Rozlynn Silvaggio\u2019s courtroom. Some of them wore custom purple-and-white T-shirts festooned with Fisher\u2019s name and likeness. Fisher\u2019s daughter Imani and another family member gave statements.<\/p>\n \u201cHis murder did not just end his life. It shattered our family forever,\u201d Imani Fisher said, fighting back sobs. \u201cAn eight-year sentence does not reflect the gravity of the choice to purposely take his life. Eight years cannot account for the life my father was denied.\u201d<\/p>\n Mario Fox, who had known Fisher since their teen years and married one of his sisters, excoriated Moore in court for the \u201ccowardly\u201d killing. \u201cAs Black men, we should be able to talk to each other face-to-face,\u201d Fox said Monday. \u201cThis senseless killing is ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n As Fisher\u2019s family spoke, Moore kept his eyes mostly on Silvaggio\u2019s bench, leaning against the barrier of the defendant\u2019s dock with one arm. He wore a yellow jail jumpsuit over a long-sleeved white T-shirt. He had a shaved scalp, a short white beard and spectacles.<\/p>\n Silvaggio acknowledged Fisher\u2019s family\u2019s pain, and said the sentence reflected \u201cthe likelihood of success from the people\u2019s perspective,\u201d not the immeasurable loss Fisher\u2019s killing had wrought.<\/p>\n \u201cI would love to believe that this could be a place of great healing, or that people could leave satisfied,\u201d Silvaggio said. \u201cBut the reality is, when you have love like that, that\u2019s bigger than anything this court has jurisdiction over.\u201d<\/p>\n Silvaggio sent Moore back to Santa Rita, pending transfer to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, at the end of Monday\u2019s hearing.<\/p>\n Neither he nor anyone else said anything on his behalf.<\/p>\n Josh Fisher wrote poetry and rap lyrics Growing up in Hayward, Josh Fisher played football and baseball, his mother, Cheryl, told Berkeleyside in a phone interview Sunday.<\/p>\n \u201cFor 25 years we were a normal, two-parent family,\u201d she said. She worked as a clinical and medical assistant at the former Cowell Memorial Hospital; Fisher\u2019s father worked as a barber in San Jose. \u201cWe had a vegetable garden, fruit trees in the backyard, and used frogs instead of chemicals to keep the insects away. We had a dog, a golden labrador retriever named Nugget. It wasn\u2019t bad until later.\u201d<\/p>\n Cheryl Fisher said her son\u2019s personality began to shift once his father moved out of their home in Hayward. Josh \u201cwas a sensitive soul, and he didn\u2019t want to be,\u201d she said. \u201cHe went from writing poetry \u2014 he used to write beautiful poetry \u2014 to writing rap lyrics and putting into the music business.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n When he was still in high school, his mother sent him to live with his father in Modesto, thinking it would help keep him off the drugs he had started using. He later lived with a longtime girlfriend, though when that relationship fell apart, he moved to Berkeley with his mother, who had already relocated there.<\/p>\n After briefly living in Sacramento, before his marriage to a different woman similarly disintegrated, Fisher came back to Berkeley again, around five years before he was killed, his mother said.<\/p>\n \u201cHe came back really broken,\u201d his mother told Berkeleyside. \u201cHe told me that he was using drugs, and I didn\u2019t doubt.\u201d He stayed in his room composing quite a bit, she said, but remained a brilliant home chef, riffing on posole (he called his version \u201cbro-sole\u201d) or his favorite thing to cook late at night, steak. \u201cSmoke detectors in all the rooms would go off, we had to open all the doors and the windows, but the steak tasted like he cooked it on a barbecue pit, it was so good,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Fisher\u2019s mother heard the \u2018pop\u2019 of the gunfire that killed her son<\/p>\n Moore had come around their Seventh Street apartment from time to time for at least several months before killing her son, Cheryl Fisher said.<\/p>\n On March 4, 2022, Josh Fisher asked his mother if he could borrow $600, though he did not say why.<\/p>\n \u201cI told him I couldn\u2019t give it to him because all I had was the rent,\u201d his mother said. \u201cHe said, \u2018I understand,\u2019 and \u2018it\u2019s OK.\u2019\u201d Josh told his mother he was going to see if a friend would loan him the money and he walked out of their apartment for the last time.<\/p>\n Roughly an hour later, she said, Moore and an associate came by looking for Josh; moments after Moore left, Cheryl Fisher said, she heard the distinctive \u201cpop\u201d of gunfire. \u201cI just knew it when I heard the pop,\u201d she said. Josh\u2019s brother Hassan went out on the family\u2019s balcony to look \u2014 their apartment faced the road where Josh was shot \u2014 and his mother heard Hassan start to scream before he tore downstairs and outside to try to resuscitate his brother, who was lying on Seventh Street.<\/p>\n Medics took Josh Fisher to Highland Hospital. He lingered for several days but without ever showing signs of brain activity. He died March 8, marking Berkeley\u2019s first homicide in over a year.<\/p>\n At the sentencing Monday, Fisher\u2019s daughter said she lives with constant nightmares, waking up screaming and soaked in sweat. The sounds of fireworks or gunshots on television drive her instantly to tears and tremors.<\/p>\n \u201cClaudel Moore, you have ruined my life forever. I will never be the same. I\u2019m not going to sit here and say my dad was perfect, but he was mine,\u201d Imani Fisher said.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tRelated stories<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\tThe 2022 Berkeley gunfire map<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\tOctober 6, 2022Dec. 2, 2022, 1:26 p.m.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\tUpdate: Man seriously wounded in shooting on Seventh Street<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\tMarch 4, 2022Aug. 4, 2022, 10:32 a.m.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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Anthony Joshua \u201cJosh\u201d Fisher was shot March 4, 2022, and died four days later. His killed was sentenced to eight years in prison. Credit: GoFundMe<\/a><\/p>\n
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