New automated license plate recognition cameras led police on Tuesday to a vehicle that had been carjacked at gunpoint in Berkeley the night before. Officers recovered a loaded firearm and safely took five suspects into custody, turning over the three carjacking suspects to the Berkeley Police Department.
Just before midnight on Monday, August 14, 2023, a black 2021 Toyota Corolla was carjacked from its owner at gunpoint in Berkeley. The suspects, three Black males, had been armed with a black semi-automatic handgun.
On Tuesday, August 15, 2023, at about 12:47 p.m., Palo Alto officers received a notification from the City’s new automated license plate recognition (ALPR) camera system that the vehicle had entered Palo Alto. Patrol officers and undercover officers began searching for the car, and after another ALPR alert at 1:04 p.m., located it backed into a parking stall on the east side of the Stanford Shopping Center at 180 El Camino Real. Undercover officers kept the vehicle under surveillance, noting that it was parked next to a similarly backed-in white 2011 Infiniti G-37. The multiple occupants of both vehicles were talking to each other, leading officers to believe that they were associated with one another.
As marked police cars entered the area to assist, the two vehicles pulled away simultaneously and began driving together through the parking lot of the Stanford Shopping Center. As they reached the Pistache Place exit to El Camino Real, police conducted a vehicle stop on both cars. The driver of the stolen Corolla attempted to evade the stop by driving up onto a sidewalk, but when its path was blocked by a police vehicle, the right front corner of the Corolla struck the passenger side of the occupied police vehicle (causing minor damage to both vehicles) before it stopped. No one was injured. Officers took the three occupants of the Corolla, as well as the four occupants of the G-37, into custody without further incident and detained them.
The ensuing investigation, conducted in close collaboration with detectives from the Berkeley Police Department, revealed that the vehicle that had transported the suspects to the scene of the original carjacking had been a white Infiniti. Police conducted a search of the Corolla and found a loaded black semi-automatic Glock handgun with a high-capacity magazine on the back seat. Police contacted the registered owner of the gun, who said it should be at a relative’s home in Fresno. Upon contact with the relative, it was determined that the gun had been stolen from the home at some point in the past three weeks. As such, the owner of the gun then filed a theft report with the Fresno Police Department. The owner of the gun had no knowledge of any of the detainees.
After additional follow-up investigation, Berkeley detectives arrested three of the seven for Monday’s carjacking and took custody of them. As the Berkeley Police Department is the arresting agency for those three suspects, any additional information release about them will need to come from the Berkeley Police Department. Two of the seven were released by police without any charges, after the investigation revealed no evidence they had committed any crime. Palo Alto Police Department personnel placed two suspects (the man driving the Corolla at the time of the stop, and one of his passengers) under arrest and took them to the Santa Clara County Main Jail.
Police booked the driver, 19-year-old Jayvontay Brown of San Francisco, for six felonies (vehicle theft, possession of a stolen vehicle, carrying a loaded firearm, carrying a concealed firearm, convicted felon in possession of a firearm, and convicted felon in possession of ammunition) and one misdemeanor (resisting arrest, for attempting to drive away from the vehicle stop). Police booked the passenger, 20-year-old Jeremiah McCardie of Oakland, for possession of a stolen vehicle. Their booking photos are available at www.cityofpaloalto.org/PAPDnews.
The ALPR camera system in Palo Alto went live the last week of July 2023, with six cameras currently installed and operational as of today. An additional 14 cameras will be installed in the coming weeks. For more information about the ALPR system, including details on privacy safeguards and data retention limits, visit www.cityofpaloalto.org/PAPDalpr.
Anyone with information about this incident is asked to call our 24-hour dispatch center at (650) 329-2413. Anonymous tips can be e-mailed to [email protected] or sent via text message or voice mail to (650) 383-8984.
