Four ambush-style killings and prison violence all stemmed from North Richmond gang war, police say

RICHMOND —  Contra Costa prosecutors have filed murder and conspiracy charges over three previously unsolved Richmond killings and an Oakland homicide, all ambush-style shootings that police have attributed to one of the Bay Area’s oldest and deadliest gang wars.

Rondell Fluker, 27, of Vallejo, along with Santa Clara resident Joseph Westbrook, 27, and Richmond resident Lavaiza Hill, 28, have been charged with murder, conspiracy and gun possession. Westbrook and Fluker were charged last year. Hill was arrested by the Contra Costa Sheriff’s office last week, court records show.

The charging documents say all three men were part of the same North Richmond gang that has been feuding with members of a Central Richmond gang for decades. The problems were reignited when Fluker, 27, was beaten and choked unconscious by a Central Richmond rival in Sacramento on June 17, 2024, prosecutors say.

The very next day, Fluker’s fellow gang members, one of whom was in prison at the time, began to text each other to plot revenge, according to the criminal complaint.

“Let’s get jiggy,” one North Richmond gang member texted another on the morning of June 18, 2024, in an apparent call to arms. Within 24 hours, a pregnant woman and two men would be gunned down in West Contra Costa, all casualties of the gang feud, prosecutors say.

Westbrook and Fluker have been charged with murder on suspicion of killing Alvaro Garciapar, 30, and Maciyah Brown, 21, both of Richmond, as well as Brown’s unborn child. She was 10 weeks pregnant, prosecutors say. Brown was sitting in a white BMW that Fluker and Westbrook allegedly followed to a store near Seventh Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, before opening fire with two pistols and a rifle, authorities say. A third, uncharged suspect was also involved, the criminal complaint alleges.

Garciapar was an innocent bystander. Bullets also struck the driver of the BMW and a woman inside the store, but both victims survived, authorities said.

The next day, Lorenzo Newell, 38, of Oakland, was shot and killed in the 1300 block of Kelsey Street in Richmond. Prosecutors called this shooting “retaliatory” to the June 17 homicides.

Then, on June 19, 2024, Rondell Fluker’s brother, Ronald Fluker, was stabbed in prison, where he is serving a lengthy sentence for killing a man on behalf of the gang. Ronald Fluker was prosecuted as part of a large-scale 2019 case involving 16 shootings, three homicides, and a string of home invasion robberies and carjackings, including the nonfatal shooting of an Orinda school board member.

Police said they believe the prison attack on Ronald Fluker was payback for his brother’s involvement in the June 18, 2024, shooting.

Hill has also been charged with murdering Willie Bernstine, an alleged Central Richmond gang member who was followed to Oakland and shot near his job on New Year’s Eve 2024. Last year, Westbrook was arrested and charged with murdering Bernstine in Alameda County, a case that remains pending. At the time, police in Oakland identified him as a member of the Swerve Team, one of several notorious gangs to come out of North Richmond.

North Richmond and Central Richmond gangs have been feuding for decades, with hundreds of shootings and numerous prosecutions targeting people on both sides.

Other gangs of North Richmond — known locally by the slang term “Narf” — have included the Project Trojans and Jet Life. In Central Richmond, gangs like Deep C have feuded with North Richmond on and off since the 1980s. The problems have spread to social media and into underground rap, where members mock each other and trade jabs. They’ve also roped other gangs into the feud, after both sides allied with feuding groups in Vallejo, Oakland and Antioch, according to authorities.

The Swerve Team developed organically as an offshoot of the older Project Trojans. Its members originally called themselves “Trojans in Training.” The name Swerve Team was formulated from the saying “Swerve for Erv,” a tribute to 2011 murder victim Ervin Colley Jr., who was shot and killed in North Richmond. Years later, a younger group, Jet Life, emerged from the unincorporated region. Several of its members also live in Rodeo, authorities say.

After the Richmond killings, police served search warrants at Fluker and Westbrook’s homes, seizing seven guns and other items related to the investigation, the complaint says.

Staff writer Jakob Rodgers contributed to this report.