OAKLAND — A San Francisco resident has been sentenced to 15 years for killing a man a week before Halloween 2022, court records show.
Amir Haynes, 23, pleaded no contest to manslaughter and was sentenced in late July, court records show. In exchange for his no contest plea, prosecutors dropped a murder charge against Haynes.
On Aug. 12, Haynes was transferred from the jail to North Kern State Prison, where he remains, records show.
The victim, 19-year-old Jermaine Kennedy, was shot and killed around 1:30 p.m. on Oct. 24, 2022, near 96th Avenue and International Boulevard in Oakland. Eyewitnesses reported seeing the two men walking together and talking before the shooting.
Angel Duarte, an onlooker who witnessed the shooting, said he saw a “chubby” man and a “thin” man walking together and assumed they were friends, “because they were walking and talking.” Asked if they were argued he said they were speaking, “a little bit rough, but sometimes that’s the way they talk,” without elaboration.
A few moments later, he heard shots and the thin man fell to the ground.
“And then the thin one was crawling,” Duarte said, later adding, “All I could see was a lot of blood.”
Eyewitnesses identified Haynes, who was arrested a week after the shooting, according to court records. He gets credit for the time he spent at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin before his case was resolved.
Police never publicly revealed the suspected motive for the shooting.