{"id":249020,"date":"2026-04-02T21:17:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T21:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/249020\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T21:17:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T21:17:08","slug":"oakland-man-gets-21-years-for-killing-auto-shop-owner-over-bad-battery-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/249020\/","title":{"rendered":"Oakland man gets 21 years for killing auto shop owner over ‘bad battery’"},"content":{"rendered":"

OAKLAND \u2014 The suspect in the 2024 killing of a popular auto shop owner<\/a> has been sentenced to 21 years in a plea deal, according to court records.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

RELATED:\u00a0Robbery suspects sought after shooting at Oakland police officers<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u2019s 2025 preliminary hearing an witness testified he heard the shooter yell \u201cyou sold me a (expletive) bad battery\u201d during an argument outside the shop.<\/p>\n

The shooting occurred on Feb. 3, 2024.<\/p>\n

The witness, who was waiting for food at a taco truck across the street, said he didn\u2019t get a good look at the shooter and that he was a family friend of the Zambranos. He referred to the shooter only as \u201cthe gentleman\u201d and that after the two men went inside the store, he heard two \u201cloud pops\u201d he could identify as gunshots.<\/p>\n

The \u201cgentleman\u201d then tore out of the store without even bothering to close the hood of his car, he testified.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe ran to his car. He got in his car. And seemed weird to me. Because he backed out real quick and he left,\u201d the man testified. \u201cHe left in a hurry\u2026you could hear the tires screech.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zambrano, a former United Farm Workers advocate, was declared dead inside the store before he could be taken to a hospital, according to police.<\/p>\n

Moore\u2019s lawyer had argued at the hearing that the police search of the store was \u201cwholly inadequate\u201d and signaled there was a possibility of arguing self-defense at trial. The prosecution argued that Zambrano was \u201cunarmed\u201d and gunned down by an angry customer whose face was seen on surveillance footage outside the store.<\/p>\n

At the preliminary hearing, Brentwood police Officer Kathryn Reymundo \u2014 a former Oakland police investigator \u2014 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\u2019t 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\u2019t have access to it.<\/p>\n

When asked directly by Moore\u2019s lawyer, Reymundo said she couldn\u2019t recall whether any of Zambrano\u2019s loved ones said he kept a gun under the counter for self-defense. At the preliminary hearing\u2019s end, Judge Amy Sekany upheld the charges after noting that she\u2019d watched video allegedly depicting Moore outside the store \u201cnot once but twice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moore was given about 615 days worth of credit for time he spent in jail while the case was pending, court records show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OAKLAND \u2014 The suspect in the 2024 killing of a popular auto shop owner has been sentenced to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89388,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[110959,861,862,143,110956,145,144,865,110958,110957],"class_list":["post-249020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-alameda-da-plea-deal","tag-bay-area-crime","tag-california-crime","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-auto-shop-shooting","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-oakland-shooting","tag-robert-moore-shooting","tag-united-farmworkers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249020","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=249020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}