{"id":93217,"date":"2025-12-13T11:17:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T11:17:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/93217\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T11:17:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T11:17:16","slug":"9-charged-with-drug-conspiracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/93217\/","title":{"rendered":"9 charged with drug, conspiracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

OAKLAND, Calif. – A federal grand jury has indicted nine people after the 2023 death of Oakland police officer Tuan Le,<\/a> who had shown up to stop a burglary at a cannabis dispensary.<\/p>\n

None of the nine were actually charged with killing Le, or pulling the trigger.<\/p>\n

9 charged<\/p>\n

Four people had originally been arrested on suspicion of murder shortly <\/a>after Le was killed, and then in August 2024, an Alameda County judge dismissed charges against one of them.<\/a><\/p>\n

The new indictment, announced Thursday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Northern California,<\/a> named those four again –Marquise Cooper, Mark Sanders, Allen Brown, and Sebron Russell \u2013 alleging they were engaged in a conspiracy to distribute more than 100 marijuana plants and discharge a firearm.<\/p>\n

Brown and Russell were additionally charged with discharging and brandishing a firearm, respectively, in connection with a drug trafficking crime, federal prosecutors said.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Brown, Russell and Sanders have already pleaded not guilty to their separate criminal charges of murder <\/a>in Alameda County Superior Court.<\/p>\n

In addition, prosecutors added five additional defendants to the federal case.<\/p>\n

Janiero Booth (a\/k\/a Javon Herrington), Jowaun Jones, Shawn McGee, and Salvador Munguia were charged with conspiring to distribute, possessing with intent to distribute, and attempting to possess with intent to distribute more than 100 marijuana plants.<\/p>\n

Mother, girlfriend<\/p>\n

Two other defendants, Jasmine Kumar and Felicia Sanders, were charged with accessory after the fact.<\/p>\n

All nine defendants were arrested Wednesday or were already in custody. \u00a0Defendants made their initial appearances in federal district court in San Francisco on Thursday, according to prosecutors.<\/p>\n

As of Friday morning, the indictments were still sealed and it was not possible to determine if the nine had defense attorneys representing them.<\/p>\n

Some of the defendants are scheduled to appear on Monday for bail proceedings before Magistrate Judge Thomas S. Hixson in San Francisco.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Oakland Police Officers Association President Huy Nguyen said: “Our union and members appreciate the support of our federal partner, the California Highway Patrol, Concord Police Department, and Pittsburg Police and the US Attorney’s Office to achieve justice in this case.”<\/p>\n

Marijuana burglary<\/p>\n

All the charges relate to three armed burglaries of a marijuana grow facility in Oakland between the night of Dec. 28, 2023, and early morning, Dec. 29, 2023. <\/p>\n

Oakland police officers responded to the third burglary, in the 400 block of Embarcadero near Ninth Avenue.<\/p>\n

When police arrived, the suspects fled in multiple vehicles. <\/p>\n

During the pursuit, someone fired more than 20 shots at one of the OPD vehicles, killing Le. In criminal court, Alameda County prosecutors<\/a> named Sanders as the alleged gunman and Brown as the accused getaway driver.<\/p>\n

Federal prosecutors allege that Kumar, the shooter\u2019s girlfriend, and Felicia Sanders, the shooter\u2019s mother, allegedly tried to help Sanders to evade police by buying him a one-way plane ticket.<\/p>\n

1st officer killed in 15 years<\/p>\n

Le was the first Oakland police officer killed while working in nearly 15 years, and he was Oakland’s 126th homicide victim of 2023.<\/p>\n

A native of Saigon, Vietnam, Le had obtained his citizenship on Sept. 11, 2001. He was an only child raised by a single mother and a graduate of Oakland High School and San Francisco State University. <\/p>\n

He joined the OPD four years before his death and had served as a community resource officer in West Oakland.<\/p>\n

At his memorial service, then-Interim Chief Darren Allison said that it was in Le’s DNA to become a police officer; his grandfather had been a police officer in his homeland.<\/p>\n

Allison personally pinned Le’s badge on him after he graduated from the academy, even though Le’s grandfather had already died.<\/p>\n

“He had such a memorable smile,” Allison said. “He had a true, true heart for service.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OAKLAND, Calif. – A federal grand jury has indicted nine people after the 2023 death of Oakland police…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[389,21725,50732,31870,7334,50721,50737,143,145,144,2452,2325,101,50733,50722],"class_list":["post-93217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-alameda-county","tag-alameda-county-superior-court","tag-allen-brown","tag-federal-grand-jury","tag-federal-prosecutors","tag-felicia-sanders","tag-mark-sanders","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-oakland-police","tag-police-officer","tag-san-francisco","tag-sebron-russell","tag-tuan-le"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93217","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=93217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}