‘One of the most callous, cold-blooded, just worst things’: Pair sentenced for Oakland shootout that killed Brentwood teen

DUBLIN — Two Bay Area men who in 2020 fired guns at each other in Oakland, but missed and instead killed a 19-year-old woman, were sentenced to decades in prison, court records show.

Fernando Sevilla, 43, was given 21 years and eight months in state prison, while 29-year-old Willie Samuels was sentenced to 28 years and four months behind bars. Both men have already been transferred to state prison. The sentencings were handed down late last year but haven’t been previously reported.

Sevilla and Samuels went on trial last year, each blaming the other for the November 2020 shootout that killed Brentwood resident Madalyn Sandoval. The men were both convicted of voluntary manslaughter with gun enhancements, but avoided murder convictions.

At the sentencing hearing, several of Sandoval’s family members spoke out. Her brother said he had no sympathy for Sevilla, who he said deserved a life sentence for his “terrible mistake.” But most of the criticism was saved for Samuels, who family members described as a manipulator that coerced and trafficked Sandoval.

“You abused my sister. You manipulated her and put her in the situation she was in,” Sandoval’s brother, Mitchell Sandoval, told Samuels at the hearing. He later added, “You are a monster and you belong in that prison cell for the rest of your life. Society has no place for men like you.”

Another sibling, Vanessa Sandoval, called him a “waste of air.”

“Madalyn Sandoval’s name should live forever. She touched too much of our lives in her short 19 years she was on this earth,” Vanessa Sandoval said. “She was the most loving, caring, free-spirited soul I will ever know.”

Samuels and Sevilla found themselves in a life-or-death conflict that escalated quickly and was captured by nearby home surveillance cameras. It started when Sandoval and Sevilla drove up in the same car and parked near San Antonio Park in East Oakland, but after a few minutes Sandoval left Sevilla’s truck and fled to Samuels’ vehicle that had stopped in a nearby alley.

Sevilla pulled his truck alongside Samuels’ car, and the two exchanged words, then gunfire. According to Alameda County Judge Paul Delucchi, after the shooting Samuels drove Sandoval to a hospital and simply “dumped” her off at the front.

Samuels and Sevilla both spoke at the sentencing hearing. Sevilla apologized, saying, “that was not my intention and not my plan.” Prosecutors, though, pointed out in a sentencing memo that he admitted to smashing the gun he used with a sledgehammer and was recorded on a jail call stating his belief that without the murder weapon, he couldn’t be charged.

“I was scared. I am verry sorry. She is in my prayers. I ask for forgiveness,” Sevilla said.

When it was his turned to speak, Samuels wanted to remind those in attendance that he was grieving Sandoval’s loss too.

“Maddie was family to me. I’m going to say it again: Maddie was family to me…I never intended Maddie to not be here,” he said, later adding that he wasn’t the type to turn his back on family. “I never intended to threaten Sevilla’s life in any way. I didn’t know this was going to happen.”

A few minutes later, Judge Delucchi spoke, calling Samuels’ actions — leaving Sandoval at the hospital — “one of the most callous, cold-blooded, just worst things I have ever seen in my life.” Prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo that Samuels had flagged down a passerby who was driving a truck, placed a dying Sandoval into the bed, then drove away in his own Honda, leaving the good Samaritan to take her the rest of the way to the hospital.

“I mean to dump a dying Madalyn Sandoval in the back of a pickup truck and then run away, to be told ‘I don’t turn my back on family,’ that’s some callous stuff,” Delucchi said.