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Second Suspect Charged in Berkeley Shooting

By Jeff Shuttleworth (BCN)
Monday November 01, 2010 - 09:52:00 PM

A second man has been charged with murder for the fatal shooting of Gary Ferguson Jr. near a Berkeley barbershop in broad daylight last week.  

Coleon Lee Carroll, a 20-year-old Berkeley man, was arrested in Antioch at 4 a.m. last Wednesday by Berkeley police with help from Oakland police, Berkeley police spokeswoman Sgt. Mary Kusmiss said.  

Kusmiss said Carroll was arrested on an unrelated warrant. On Friday, however, the Alameda County District Attorney's office charged him with murder and attempted murder for last week's shooting.  

The shooting occurred in the 2900 block of Sacramento Street in Berkeley at 8:45 a.m. on Oct. 26. Ferguson, a 35-year-old Oakland man, was killed and a second man was seriously injured.  

Berkeley police announced Thursday that 21-year-old Brandon Wallace, of Bay Point, had been charged with murder and attempted murder for the shooting, in which they said at least a few dozen shots were fired.  

Carroll was arraigned in Alameda County Superior Court on Friday and is scheduled to return to court on Nov. 10 to finalize his legal representation and possibly enter a plea.  

Wallace was arraigned last Thursday and is scheduled to return to court on Dec. 27 to enter a plea.  

According to Oakland police, Carroll had previously been arrested on a robbery warrant in Hercules on July 9, 2009, as part of an investigation into an ongoing feud between rival gangs from South Berkeley and North Oakland.  

Police said the gangs might have been behind an escalation in shootings in Berkeley and Oakland in 2009.  

Oakland police said that when officers tried to serve the arrest warrant on Carroll at a home in the 100 block of Chestnut Avenue in Hercules, he fled through a back window and an officer shot him after seeing him allegedly reach for a weapon.  

Carroll suffered a gunshot wound to his abdomen and was treated at a hospital.  

Carroll's brother, Joseph Carroll, then 22, was also arrested in the gang probe, police said. He was arrested on suspicion of being a felon in possession of a firearm.