DUBLIN — A man was sentenced to 14 years in state prison for killing his ex-girlfriend’s cousin during a dispute over a vehicle, court records show.
Zechariah Fisher, 26, pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter in a plea deal with Alameda County prosecutors. In exchange for his plea, prosecutors dropped a murder charge. Fisher was transferred to state prison in April and is currently incarcerated in Wasco, records show.
But before he was sent to prison, Fisher apologized in court for killing Deccra Lloyd Haskell, a crime police say was over a Jeep that Fisher and his ex-girlfriend had shared. Fisher maintained that when he killed Haskell on Oct. 3, 2022, he believed he was being “set up.”
“There is not a day that goes by that I do not regret what I did. I took the life of an innocent man,” Fisher said. “I plan to spend my time in prison better understanding of what would cause me to commit these tragic and unforgiving acts.”
He ended his statement with an apology to, “the court, my family, Deccra Haskell and to the entire community.”
At Fisher’s 2023 preliminary hearing, his ex-girlfriend testified that she and Fisher argued over a Jeep that they shared during their relationship, and that Fisher had recently stolen the car while she was at work, using a power tool to take off a club on the steering wheel.
This culminated with an intense argument at the apartment complex where Fisher lived, on the 25200 block of Carlos Bee Boulevard, not far from the Cal State East Bay campus. The woman and Haskell confronted Fisher there around 6 a.m. on the morning of the homicide.
“When I got there, my cousin immediately threw a punch. Zechariah tried to swing back, missed, pulled out a gun and shot and fired,” the woman testified at the preliminary hearing.
At the hearing, Fisher’s lawyer argued that it was a case of self-defense and that, at its worst, the homicide was manslaughter, not murder. Judge Jennifer Madden disagreed and held Fisher on the murder charge, clearing the way for a potential trial.
Fisher gets credit for the roughly two-and-a-half years he spent in jail awaiting a resolution in his case, court records show.