Details emerge about suspected gunman in Oakland parole agent killing

OAKLAND — The 48-year-old man accused of fatally shooting a parole agent Thursday in East Oakland was released from jail just months earlier for a random 2022 stabbing near Lake Merritt where witnesses said he had been mumbling and talking to himself before the attack.

New details began to emerge Friday about Bryan Keith Hall, the Oakland man authorities say shot and killed a parole agent inside a state corrections office in East Oakland. The death of Joshua Byrd, 40, marked the first on-duty killing of a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation officer in seven years.

Hall remained held without bail Friday morning at the Santa Rita Jail on suspicion of first-degree murder, while awaiting an arraignment scheduled for Monday.

Court records show Hall has faced numerous arrests over the past 30 years across Northern California, including in Alameda, Contra Costa and Stanislaus counties.

Most recently, he was sentenced Feb. 5 in the 2022 stabbing of a man in Oakland’s Lakeshore retail area.

The stabbing happened around 11:20 a.m. the morning of Nov. 21, 2022, in 3200 block of Lakeshore Avenue, in one of the city’s busiest commercial areas. Witnesses claimed he attacked a man — who appeared to be either hanging posters outside a building or talking on his phone — completely at random, plunging a knife into his lower neck before fleeing, according to court testimony.

One person saw Hall panhandling before the attack, while another person said Hall approached his vehicle and spoke incoherently. Everyone who saw the encounter said that Hall appeared to either talking or mumbling to himself in the moments beforehand, court records show.

Oakland police quickly arrested Hall, and he was later charged with attempted murder.

At a key evidentiary hearing in November 2024, Hall’s public defender raised serious concerns about the man’s wellbeing, suggesting the attack was “likely driven by some sort of mental health issues.” Even so, Alameda County Judge Thomas Reardon said enough evidence existed to send the case to trial.

In January, Hall accepted a plea deal in the case that called for him to plead no contest to felony assault with a deadly weapon, in exchange for all of the other counts being dropped, court records show. He was expected to be sentenced to four years in state prison, and he could shave half of that prison sentence off with good behavior.

Since Hall had already spent more than two years at Santa Rita Jail awaiting trial on the charges, he was expected to be released the day of his sentencing, which was scheduled for Feb. 5, Judge Thomas Nixon said at the plea hearing.

Defendants in such cases typically spend two years on parole, according to state sentencing guidelines.

It remained unclear early Friday afternoon whether Byrd was Hall’s personal parole agent, or whether the two had previously interacted. It also was not immediately clear where Hall had been living, and what types of services he had been receiving while on parole.

Hall has faced numerous other charges in previous incidents. He was convicted of second-degree robbery conviction in Alameda County in 1996, and assault with force likely to produce great bodily injury, unlawful taking of a vehicle and evading police in Stanislaus County in November 2017. Other convictions include drug offenses and vehicle theft and possession of a firearm by a felon.