Already in jail on November 2022 murder charge, East Bay man faces new accusation that he killed another man five months earlier

OAKLAND — Months after he was charged with killing a man who would posthumously be implicated in the rolling gun battle that killed 23-month-old Jasper Wu, a Pleasant Hill man has been implicated in a second homicide that police say appears to have been a targeted hit, court records show.

Darious Smith, 33, was charged in late April with murder in the death of Richard Lamont Duncan III, 30, of Richmond. The charges were filed five months after Smith was charged with murder in the Nov. 4, 2022 killing of 34-year-old Keison "Keke" Lee, which authorities allege was a gang-related shooting.

Smith, who has addresses listed in Pleasant Hill and Hayward, is listed in police records as a member of the San Francisco-based Chopper City gang, while Lee was allegedly part of a rival gang known as Eddy Rock. According to the charging documents in both cases, Duncan's June 2022 killing stemmed from an argument at a party on Treasure Island, and Lee's shooting was motivated by the ongoing violent rivalry between the gangs.

Duncan attended a birthday party on Treasure Island during the evening of June 24, 2022. At some point, a heated argument broke out, leading one of the attendees to attack several of Duncan's "female family members," police said in court records. What apparently got Duncan killed was intervening to defend his family and pull the assailant off; authorities say after he did that, the assailant's sister said she’d be "calling someone up to clear this (expletive) out."

After the party, Duncan ended up at an after-hours event on the 1700 block of Broadway Avenue in Oakland. At around 3:45 a.m., a masked gunman walked up and fired at Duncan, killing him, police say. Prosecutors allege that Smith's DNA was found on a shell casing at the scene and they have evidence showing he was called to the area by at least one person who’d been involved in the earlier conflict.

Lee, a San Francisco resident, was fatally shot around 2 p.m. Nov. 4 on the 800 block of 81st Avenue, near San Leandro Street, a mostly industrial area in Oakland. Police have described it as a drive-by shooting. Smith was identified as a suspect through "electronic evidence and witness statements," and arrested the following month at a Pleasant Hill apartment, police wrote in court records.

Almost exactly a year before Lee was killed, on Nov. 6, 2021, he and 34-year-old Johnny Jackson were driving on Interstate 880 when two alleged Eddy Rock gang members, identified by police as Trevor Green, 22, of Richmond; and Ivory Bivins, 24, of Vallejo, pulled up alongside them. In the gunfight that followed, a stray bullet traveled across the freeway and fatally struck Jasper, who was riding in the backseat of his parents’ car.

Smith remains in Santa Rita Jail on a no-bail hold. He has pleaded not guilty to both murder charges and is awaiting a preliminary hearing in both cases.

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