OAKLAND — Nine months ago, Darnell Anding was in jail facing a potential life sentence, with no ability to be bailed out.
Today he’s out of custody, serving a two-year probation term, with the murder case having been thrown out by a judge who said it was a first in his 27-year career. Anding had been accused of murdering Corey “BC” Waters, a 52-year-old man who was fatally shot on Aug. 16, 2024 inside a shared living residence on the 3200 block of Adeline Street in Berkeley.
The significant turnaround started last March, when Judge Thomas Reardon said he’d never thrown out a murder case at a preliminary hearing due to a self-defense argument before, but was prepared to do so. Reardon noted that both men were allegedly selling drugs on the street, and that there was video evidence Waters had threatened Anding with a gun the night before the homicide.
“Both of these gentlemen, for lack of a better phrase, were up to no good. Sometimes these things, when that is the case, play out very unfortunately,” Reardon said. “It could have played out very unfortunately for both of them. Here, it played out very unfortunately for Mr. Waters.”
With the murder case torpedoed, all prosecutors had was a felony charge accusing Anding of possessing the gun he used to kill Waters. He wasn’t allowed to have guns due to a 2013 conviction for robbery, court records show.
In late May, Anding settled the case. He pleaded no contest to the gun charge and was formally sentenced to 500 days in jail — time he had already served — as well as a two-year probation term.
When Anding was arrested, police said he and Waters were longtime friends who had sold drugs together in the past, but had been arguing in the days before Waters death. Anding’s defense attorney, Ernie Castillo, says that Waters followed Anding up to the fourth floor of the residence, where the deadly confrontation occurred.
Police say that after the shooting, Anding went to a neighboring residence and washed himself, discarded bloody clothing and wrapped two firearms in a t-shirt. The guns were later recovered from the closet where he allegedly stashed them.
Authorities identified Anding as a suspect with help from other residents in the facility, but had to navigate through Anding’s many aliases, including “Dope,” Salaah Odin, and “Cell,” court records show.