Joseph Carroll Jr. murder trial: Evidence all in but jury's still out
The trial offered an unprecedented window into alleged Berkeley gang history dating back 20 years and some of its major players.
The murder case of Joseph Carroll Jr., an alleged Berkeley gang member accused of killing three men and trying to kill three others over just two years, is now in the jury’s hands.
The backdrop of the violence, the prosecution said, was an ongoing feud between Berkeley's Waterfront gang — which police say Carroll ran for years — and gang members in North Oakland.
The DA's office charged Carroll with four shootings from April 2009 to April 2011, when he was in his early 20s.
In each of the shootings, the prosecution said, Carroll unleashed a hail of bullets on his unsuspecting victims.
The cross-border rift was a small part of broader tension in Oakland, where rising violence resulted in controversial gang injunctions and ongoing news coverage that sparked national headlines.
Emilie Raguso
The cases police linked to Carroll largely went cold until 2016 when OPD conducted new interviews with people who claimed to know what happened.
In 2017, the Alameda County DA's office filed murder and attempted murder charges against Carroll, along with related crimes. He's been in custody without bail at Santa Rita Jail ever since.
Opening statements in the case took place nearly two months ago, on June 24, before Judge Jason Chin.
Over the course of the proceedings, prosecutor Natasha Jontulovich put more than 50 witnesses on the stand.
A parade of resistant witnesses
Nearly all of the civilians called to testify said they did not want to be there and had only come to court because of subpoenas, arrests or other law enforcement pressure.
Some, including shooting survivors or eyewitnesses who could have provided key evidence, refused to utter a word.
Many of the civilian witnesses denied making incriminating statements to police about Carroll years earlier — saying they had been coerced, under the influence or motivated by other factors.
"I was up under so much coke then, I don't remember nothin'," said witness Rodney Smith, who was dressed in red jail scrubs and answered nearly every question for over an hour with essentially the same denial, insisting he had been high when police questioned him.
Some witnesses said they didn't remember details because so much time had passed: It's been 17 years since significant events transpired.
To counter many of the denials, the prosecution played recordings of prior statements, in which witnesses generally appeared forthcoming with police, and called in officers themselves to testify.
Prosecutor Jontulovich told jurors it would be up to them to "look at everything in the whole" and decide which version of the truth to believe.
Defense: "It's all fabrications"
Some of the most damning testimony against Carroll came from former Berkeley gang members and other close friends who claimed to have inside information about his crimes, including confessions from Carroll himself.
The defense dismissed those statements as lies and said those individuals had gotten deals for their cooperation or hoped to benefit in the future.
"It's all fabrications, it's all rumor mill, none of which has any validity at all," said defense attorney William Welch, who represents Carroll along with co-counsel Todd Bequette.
Alexandria Davis, a woman who has a child with Carroll, also spoke to police at length over the years. Her prior statements made up a large portion of the prosecution's case.
When she took the stand in late July, Davis disavowed her earlier statements and said she had made up a litany of complaints against Carroll because she didn't want him to be around their daughter.
The prosecution argued that Davis was truthful with police but has now recanted because she fears Carroll and is tied to his family for life due to their child.
According to Jontulovich, Carroll called Davis earlier this year and told her it would be "better for him" if she refused to answer questions during the trial.
"That is what a guilty person does, ladies and gentlemen," Jontulovich told the jury last week. "He knows he can control her. She is connected to him forever."
Carroll, who turned 38 in early August, did not take the stand during the trial.
The defense team questioned prosecution witnesses at length but ultimately called none of its own, saying it would "rest on the state of the evidence."
Four shootings: Three men dead, three survived
According to the prosecution, Joseph Carroll Jr. was a passenger in a car when he opened fire on brothers Bao and Nguyen Ngo (pronounced "No") as they stood with friends on 45th Street in North Oakland in 2009, killing 18-year-old Nguyen.
The shooting, which Bao survived, took place in broad daylight.
Bao staunchly refused to testify in the case despite repeated efforts by Jontulovich to get him on the stand.
In 2010, authorities say Carroll shot Deandre Ware and Aaron Shaw, who survived the ambush at the Acorn housing complex in West Oakland.
A month later, police say Carroll shot 24-year-old Nehemiah Lewis, who perished. That shooting also took place in broad daylight on a West Oakland block.
About a year after that, in 2011, authorities say Carroll shot into an occupied vehicle on a busy block in East Oakland, fatally wounding 23-year-old Andrew Henderson Jr.
The defense has flatly denied all the allegations against Carroll, describing the prosecution as "insidious" and criticizing the investigation as sloppy and deceptive.
"The sole issue in this case is identity," Welch told jurors last week. "Leave no misunderstanding: The only issue that you are being asked to truly decide is whether Joseph Carroll was the individual responsible for these crimes."
The jury began deliberations last week Tuesday after hearing closing arguments from attorneys that had spanned two days.
For nearly all of the two-month trial, The Scanner was the only news outlet in the courtroom.
Emilie Raguso
The Berkeley-Oakland feud: An OG takes the stand
One of the key witnesses in the prosecution's case was Gregg Fite, who described how he had grown up in South Berkeley and run a gang in his neighborhood in the early 2000s.
As the years went on, South Berkeley and North Oakland came into conflict after "a kid got killed," Fite said. "It was just a lot of retaliatory violence back and forth."
Fite said Carroll was 16 or 17 when they first met more than 20 years ago. Fite was nearly 30 at the time.
"He just started hanging around and we just embraced him," Fite said.
Fite acknowledged that his gang had been involved in "criminal activities," including drug sales, and said he initially put Carroll "on the corner" to watch for police.
Carroll, he said, later "graduated to some of the stuff we were doing at the time."
Other witnesses said gang business included gun sales and gun trades along with more violent crimes.
Over the years, Fite said, Carroll formed a crew in West Berkeley's Waterfront neighborhood with some of his friends and relatives.
"It wasn't like we was ever really separate," Fite said, of South and West Berkeley. "It was just all pretty much Berkeley. They just was from that end of town. It was just one group."
Eventually, Fite said, as tension started to grow between Berkeley and North Oakland in 2007, Carroll took charge of Berkeley gang operations.
"They was gonna get smoked"
On April 23, 2009, the day of the Nguyen Ngo homicide, Fite said he and Carroll had argued in Richmond at a house where they kept guns because Carroll felt Fite "wasn't helpin' them out" enough in Berkeley's dispute with North Oakland.
"I said that, man, if y'all need my old ass to help y'all…. y'all pathetic," Fite said.
Carroll "was hot," Fite added. "We was goin' back and forth."
Fite said that, by 2009, he was a father with a couple kids and was trying to "smooth my life out." He was also on parole and had a GPS monitor tracking his every move.
Fite said he had gone to North Oakland to run an errand that day when one of the Waterfront guys — Jermaine Davis, Carroll's cousin — called him and told him to "hit laps" to see if he could find Bao Ngo.
When Fite saw Ngo on 45th Street, he reported the location to the gang.
Fite said he recalled driving down 45th Street and seeing Davis driving a Mercedes-Benz behind him.
He said he could see "Joe outta the back window" firing a machine gun at the Ngos. The top half of Carroll's body was outside the car.
Jontulovich asked Fite what he thought their goal had been that day.
"Smoke em, kill em. They was gonna get smoked," Fite said. "If we hit laps to see if somebody out there, we ain't pullin' up to shake hands with 'em."
In 2018, police arrested Fite in connection with the Ngo homicide. His GPS ankle monitor had put him in the area.
Fite was charged as an accessory to murder but ended up with a deal — pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter in exchange for cooperating with authorities on the Carroll case.
According to the deal, his case would be dropped if he testified truthfully against Carroll, he said.
Jontulovich asked Fite why he'd agreed to the offer when he'd refused to speak with police in the past.
"Frankly, I just got put up under enough pressure and I cracked," Fite said. "I got older, had more responsibilities. I wasn't living like that. Ten years later, I was doin' a whole different thing."
Fite also described how he'd been ostracized after a statement he made to police, which included his home address, ended up on Instagram. That made him a snitch, he said.
"When you're a snitch, in general, what happens?" Jontulovich asked.
"You could be killed," Fite said. "A variety of things could happen."
Fite became part of a witness protection program in 2018, leaving the area and moving himself and five family members into hotels for their safety.
He said he wasn't reimbursed for any expenses until this year and, although he'd gotten about $40,000 since May, it had only covered a fraction of his costs.
"Those are months," he said. "I've been running for my life for years."
Gregg Fite: "Original Gangsta" or just an "Older Guy"?
The defense found many ways to attack Gregg Fite's credibility, pointing to the money he'd been paid and how little time he'd spent in jail despite his involvement in the Ngo shooting.
Defense attorney Welch said Fite had "groomed Joseph Carroll to the streets," which Fite did not dispute.
"Would you be considered an 'OG' in reference to Joseph Carroll?" Welch asked.
"Yes," Fite told him.
"What is an 'OG'?" asked Welch.
"Older Guy?" Fite replied.
"Original Gangsta, Old Gangsta?" Welch pressed.
"OG," Fite said: "Older Guy."
On the stand, Fite mostly kept his emotions in check despite a battery of questions.
At one point, however, he began calling Welch by his first name to punctuate his answers.
At another, Fite clearly lost his composure, openly disparaging a woman's looks when Welch asked if Fite had lived with her.
"HELL NO. Again, hell no," Fite said, getting heated. "You see that picture?"
"She's not your type?" Welch asked.
"That's kind of an understatement," Fite said.
There were also allegations that Fite poked or jabbed toward a Carroll supporter and threatened him during a break, but the judge denied a defense request to ask Fite about it on the stand, describing it as misdemeanor battery "at most."
Gregg Fite "stands alone"
During his closing arguments, Welch described Fite as a "known liar" with more than a dozen fraud convictions.
Welch also referenced the deal Fite made with police to give testimony against Carroll — and said Fite made up details he thought would make his story more convincing.
But those details would be his downfall, Welch said.
As one example, Welch said there was nothing in the record to corroborate that Fite and Carroll had argued in Richmond before the Ngo shooting. He said police hadn't bothered to see if GPS data from Fite's ankle monitor could back up his story.
Welch also said Fite "stands alone" in describing Carroll leaning out of the back window of a car "to his torso" during the drive-by shooting.
He reminded jurors that Fite never gave those details before the trial and said no one else had seen anything like it.
"Bravo, my friend," Welch said, emphasizing his words with slow applause. "Mr. Fite, in that moment of time, confused the idea of immunity with impunity."
"What do I mean by that?" Welch continued. "He has been given a pass to lie and that pass ensures his freedom — but for the bulwark that is you as fact finders in this case."
Other people who told police they had seen Carroll in the back seat were mistaken, repeating gossip they took for their own memory, or otherwise motivated to lie, Welch said.
He urged jurors to remember the testimony of two teenage girls who both told police the shooter had been driving the car.
At least one of them had been certain the back seat had been empty.
"I know there wasn't anybody in the back seat," she had told police. "Because … I seen the boy drop through the back seat window."
"Think about that," Welch said. "Did she make stuff up? Or did you find her to be a …. credible witness without motive to lie?"
"Which cat means the most business?"
One witness, Djuan Brown, had told police years earlier that "Berkeley dudes" from the Waterfront area killed 18-year-old Nguyen Ngo because Ngo was from North Oakland and was "supposed to have came through a couple times" and "shot at a few guys" from Berkeley.
In fact, Brown told police, Ngo had once shot at him and Carroll, but had missed.
Other witnesses said Ngo may have been driving a car during a different incident when one of his passengers shot Carroll.
Shortly after Ngo was killed, Brown said Carroll called and told him, "We got one."
Brown said he and Carroll had been best friends for about five years at the time.
When police interviewed Brown, they had asked him to explain, "from your clique, your side, the Berkeley side … which cat is the real deal?"
"Which cat means the most business?" investigators asked him.
"Joe," Brown told them, without hesitation.
"He the real deal?" one of the detectives asked.
"Yeah," Brown said emphatically. "Hell, yeah."
Brown also told police that Gregg Fite had fallen in the ranks from the quarterback calling the shots to just a "spotter."
"He see a target, he hit a motherfucker phone," Brown said. "He ain't shootin' no more."
"He was the man," Brown continued. "The man. And then he just fell off."
Brown said Fite had put Carroll "up under his wing" and then Carroll rose up and "went on his own."
The prosecution played video clips of the police interview in court.
On the stand during the trial, Brown said he did not recall making those statements. He said none of them were true and called himself a "habitual liar."
"But you were friends?" defense attorney Welch asked him, in relation to Carroll, during cross-examination.
"Yeah. At the time," Brown said. "Went to prison for seven years."
The defense said police had failed to find phone records to corroborate Carroll's alleged confession call and said Brown had just been repeating "rumors and lies" to get out of jail.
"I don't know what the fuck I was doing," Brown testified. "That was 15 years ago. I snorted a lotta cocaine, (been) shot six times… 12 different prisons. I don't remember none of those things."
"Free Joe, fuck it, they made me say it," he added. "They made me try to go against Joe. That's what the fuck they made me do."
Welch asked Brown to elaborate on what police had done to coerce him and whether they had promised him anything in exchange.
"I don't even remember, honestly," he said. "I don't."
Sean Fleming, a former OPD homicide detective who retired as a lieutenant also testified briefly about interviewing Brown in 2009.
Fleming recalled how Berkeley police had called OPD after picking Brown up.
"They said they had a person who wanted to talk to us about these murders," Fleming said.
"Did you promise him anything in the car ride over?" Jontulovich asked.
"Nope, nothing," Fleming said. "We'd never talk to them in the car. We always talk to them when we get to interview rooms."
Fleming said Brown had "sought us out" and was cooperative throughout the interview. He had not appeared intoxicated in any way, the former detective added.
"We didn't have to prod him," Fleming said. "He talked for a long time on his own."
May 3, 2010: Acorn housing project shooting
The next shooting took place at the Acorn housing complex in West Oakland, where Alexandria Davis was living with her young daughter, who was also Carroll's child. It had been about a year since Nguyen Ngo was killed.
Davis had split up with Carroll several years earlier and was dating a man named Deandre Ware, who was from North Oakland, she told police.
"The defendant was mad," prosecutor Jontulovich told the jury. "He was not accepting the fact they were not in a relationship anymore."
Davis told police Carroll said she was "fucking with the enemy" by dating Ware.
"He cannot let Ms. Davis be with a North Oakland person," Jontulovich said. "That is disrespect."
On the night of the shooting, May 3, 2010, Deandre Ware had been walking through the Acorn courtyard with friends Aaron Shaw and Nehemiah Lewis when Carroll "ambushed" them, according to the prosecution.
Police said Carroll waited in the darkness just outside Acorn's fence and fired at least 17 rounds into the courtyard from 10th Street, hitting Ware and Shaw.
Both survived but had serious injuries. Shaw had to use a cane to walk and Ware's arm was limp for years, according to court testimony.
"I was already goin' to the door, that's when I got shot," Ware, now a 40-year-old father of three, testified in early July. "Tried to be faster than the bullets and shit. But I failed."
Bradley Young, a retired OPD sergeant, testified that "people were running everywhere" and screaming as he arrived.
Nehemiah Lewis was crying as he stood over one of his wounded friends: "I thought he may have seen something," Young said.
A crowd formed around the two young men on the ground as blood began to pool near one of them.
"The second I started to ask questions, they all dispersed," Young said. That included Lewis.
"People generally do not like talking to the police," Young said.
Another veteran OPD officer and former homicide detective, George Phillips, said it was always "difficult" to get witness statements in Oakland "because there are consequences" for anyone who helps police.
No one said they saw Carroll in the area that night.
On the stand, Ware denied having any trouble with Carroll before the shooting.
He said Carroll had never threatened him or had a problem with him dating Alexandria Davis.
Jontulovich asked Ware whether he recalled describing "feuding between Oakland and Berkeley" when he'd come in for an interview last year, or saying he had talked to Carroll the night before the shooting.
An OPD homicide investigator who also testified confirmed Ware said as much.
But, when Ware took the stand, he denied discussing either topic and said he had never once talked to Carroll or been threatened by him.
"You do not want to testify?" Jontulovich asked Ware, in closing.
"I don't want to be in this courtroom at all," he said.
Jontulovich also called Aaron Shaw to testify about the Acorn shooting but he refused to participate or give evidence despite an immunity offer.
Alexandria Davis: "It made my life hell"
According to Alexandria Davis, Carroll had pledged to kill Ware like he had killed Nguyen Ngo, she told police during their investigation.
"I'm gonna light your house up," he reportedly told her on April 29, 2010, several days before the Acorn shooting.
Carroll said he would kill Ware "if that's the last thing I do," Davis told police.
Carroll had called Davis from a blocked number right after the Acorn shooting, she said, angry she had let their toddler witness the chaotic scene.
The little girl had been standing in the doorway, jumping up and down screaming, while Davis tried to get her bearings.
"Why the fuck you got my daughter outside lookin' at all that shit?" Carroll had asked her.
"That's what made me think he was somewhere close," she told police.
Multiple people told police that "issues with his [Carroll's] baby mama" had provoked the Acorn shooting.
The defense said Davis lied to police about Carroll making threats and that the "baby mama drama" involving Ware had been "pure fiction."
"She was willing to use the police as a tool. And the police were willing tools," Welch said. "For some reason, they are mad about Joseph Carroll. And they will listen to anything."
Over the years when Davis spoke to police, she said she had struggled to break things off with Carroll.
In addition to threatening and harassing phone calls, there were allegations of ongoing domestic violence, including that he choked her, pistol-whipped her and slammed her against a fence.
"He always told me he was gonna kill me, or kill my mama or kill my stepdad" if she didn't do what he wanted, she had said.
Davis said she made many police reports against Carroll, but charges were never filed.
"Every time I try to leave him, he would kidnap me from somewhere or beat me up," she said in one recorded statement.
"People didn't want me around. They knew, once I came around, he was gonna come around," she had said. "It made my life hell."
Carroll had also told her she'd only be safe in Oakland if he and God were on her side, Davis told OPD. Otherwise, he told her, "I'm in the danger zone."
Davis and Ware fled to Texas shortly after the Acorn shooting so she could put some distance between herself and Carroll.
"I left with the clothes on my back," she had said. "I just felt like I was safer there."
She and Ware eventually married and had a son but are no longer together.
Davis had described Carroll to police as "a crazy person" and said she didn't want him around their daughter.
"He's just a dangerous person for her to be around," she had said.
Police also asked Davis if Carroll only intended to scare people when he showed up with a gun.
"No, he shoots to kill," Davis had told them. "When he's shooting, he's shooting to kill."
"A colorful relationship"
On the stand during the trial, however, Davis insisted she had lied repeatedly to police to get "immediate results."
"They're all lies," she testified. "I wanted Joseph to go to jail immediately so that I could get my daughter."
Davis said Carroll never threatened Ware and that everything else was made up too, including her claim that she had seen Carroll in the back seat of a gold Mercedes in North Oakland shortly before the Ngo shooting in 2009.
"I was in love with him since I was 16 years old," she said. "It's like a blur. But I did say a lotta things."
Did he choke you? Jontulovich asked Davis at one point during the trial.
"We had a colorful relationship," she said. "We had fights. I fought back."
Davis previously told police Carroll "always had a gun," another claim she denied on the stand.
"I wanted to do anything in my power to get him taken out of the picture," she said. "I needed him to be out of the picture so I could take care of my daughter on my own."
June 11, 2010: Nehemiah Lewis homicide
It was only a month after the Acorn shooting when 24-year-old Nehemiah "Nemo" Lewis was gunned down in broad daylight on Athens Avenue, a one-block stretch between Market Street and San Pablo Avenue in West Oakland.
Lewis had been selling drugs to a woman from the neighborhood when, according to the prosecution, Carroll came "out of nowhere" and started shooting.
Police found nine casings at the scene.
"That's not even counting what's inside Nehemiah Lewis, left in his body," Jontulovich said.
Witnesses said the shooter jumped out of a car with his face wrapped up to hide his identity.
The shooter was pointing a "big gun" that looked like an assault rifle or "kind of a machine gun," witnesses said.
He fired the large weapon as he advanced on Lewis.
One witness, Yuvonda Alexander, testified that the shooter had looked to be about 5 feet 2, "about my height."
Alexander seemed to remember much of the incident in detail despite having been a heavy crack cocaine user at the time. When the shooting happened, she was sober, she said, about to score for the first time that day.
Alexander began sobbing when she described how Lewis had started bleeding immediately, continued to walk, and then collapsed on the sidewalk in front of her.
"Nemo said, 'I'm hit, go get my mom, go get my mom,'" Alexander recalled. She dropped and pressed her body to the ground as bullets struck the wall above her.
Alexander said she had stayed there, frozen in fear, unable to look around. She couldn't move for several minutes, until "somebody came and picked me up and carried me away," she said.
Alexander said she couldn't be sure if the shooter was male or female but hadn't looked too close.
"I didn't want to be caught lookin' at him any more than I was," she said.
Paradise Green: "I know Joe"
But another woman, Paradise Green, told police she had seen Joseph Carroll in the car with a gun on his lap — before the shooting and before he wrapped his face.
She said she thought he was going to rob her.
"That day I seen him and I know I seen him," she had told police about a year after the homicide. "I know Joe."
Green said she ran into the middle of the street when the shooting started, and that "all the traffic stopped on both sides" in response to the gunfire.
"That was the first time ever in my life I saw someone get shot in front of me," Green had told police.
Carroll "just stood on the corner and shot down," she told detectives. No one else got out of the car.
"No one else?" they asked. "No one else," she said.
"Just him, right?" police asked. "Just him," she said.
During that early interview, Green also told police she recognized Carroll, in part, because her then-boyfriend, who was from North Oakland, didn't like Joe — the result of "turf stuff" between the two cities.
On the stand during the trial, Green denied having seen the shooter's face and said she had just been recounting neighborhood gossip about his identity.
She said she'd only talked to police after they showed up three times and "pressured" her.
Green said she also turned down an offer from the FBI to pay her to cooperate.
"I said, no thank you. I do not want to be a part of this," she said.
"Do you want to be here today?" Jontulovich asked.
"I do not," Green said. "You guys forced me to come."
Green also testified that, before the trial, officers had treated her "like a criminal" and threatened to take her child to CPS if she didn't show up for court.
"You guys keep using my only lifeline against me," Green said. "So I'm here."
Jontulovich later played Green's interview with OPD detectives for the jury, arguing that it showed her "willingly giving this information to police."
The prosecutor said it was understandable that Green didn't want to be seen cooperating or as an eyewitness to murder, both common sentiments in Oakland.
Nonetheless, Jontulovich argued, the OPD video made it "abundantly clear that she was relaying firsthand information."
Defense: "That Joe ain't this Joe"
Defense attorney Welch interpreted the evidence differently.
During cross-examination, he put his hands on Carroll's shoulders and asked Green: "Do you know this individual seated right here?"
"No," she answered. "I can see that person but I'm not sure if I ever seen him."
"Is this the Joe that you knew back in 2010," Welch asked.
"I don't recognize him," Green said.
Last week, Welch explained to the jury that some witnesses had described the person who killed Nehemiah Lewis as small and thin, in contrast to Carroll, who is 5 feet 9 and about 240 pounds, according to booking records.
Welch acknowledged that Green had told police the shooter was 5 feet 10 and had dreadlocks. Both descriptions are consistent with Carroll.
But unlike Carroll, the defense said, Green said the "Joe" she knew drove a white Aurora with 24-inch rims.
"The Aurora stands out as a unicorn," Welch told the jury. "It is an Oldsmobile, and not very well received by the public. It stands out like a sore thumb."
He said police could have found that car and its owner had they chased down the lead.
"That Joe ain't this Joe," he argued. "All the most critical evidence on identity … points away from Joseph Carroll."
April 13, 2011: Andrew Henderson Jr. homicide
Several men from Oakland testified during the trial about the night their friend, Andrew Henderson Jr., was fatally wounded in the back seat of their car.
None of them identified the shooter.
That night, April 13, 2011, the group had stopped near 98th Avenue and E Street in East Oakland where quite a few people had gathered.
One of the men said he was immediately uncomfortable because none of them was from that neighborhood. He said he didn't know who they might run into on the block.
At one point, a PT Cruiser pulled up. Henderson's friends recognized a young man from Berkeley in the passenger seat. They were "cool" with him, so they relaxed.
But, all of a sudden, someone in the PT Cruiser started shooting.
"I'm hit, I'm hit," Henderson had said. Then he stopped moving. One of his friends jumped in the back seat and gave him mouth-to-mouth to try to revive him.
"He wasn't moving," one of them told police. He held Henderson and shook him, saying "stay with us, stay with us."
The group sped off toward Highland Hospital but came across an ambulance crew on International Boulevard first. It was about 8 p.m.
Jennifer Meadows, a member of the crew, testified about how the young men had parked close, then started pulling on the ambulance doors so hard that it started "rocking."
The men screamed frantically for help. Their driver's side and rear passenger windows were shattered.
In the back seat, Henderson was slumped over, unresponsive.
"I spoke to him, but he didn't speak in return," Meadows said.
Henderson's friends made sure he got into the ambulance and then drove off.
It would take time for police to find their car and determine where the shooting happened.
Police later asked Henderson's friends to identify the shooter, but they declined.
"I'm not pointing that man out," one of them said. "I'm not gonna get killed."
Authorities said one witness to the homicide did identify Carroll.
But, like so much of the evidence in the case, there were conflicting accounts.
During the trial, the witness testified that he never identified anyone.
Police say the ID happened in a room at OPD without a camera, where detectives took the witness to make him more comfortable.
Unfortunately for the prosecution, the audio recording of what was said in the room went missing before trial, leaving only a transcript — which was not admissible as evidence — to document what transpired.
Phillips, one of the former homicide detectives who took the stand, said the witness had pointed to Carroll in a photo lineup — that video was played for the jury — and then made a more definitive ID off-camera in the second room.
"It was almost like, he wanted to tell me but he didn't want to be seen doing it," Phillips said. "I think that's what he was struggling with."
The prosecution said Henderson was from North Oakland and had been associated with gang members on 45th Street.
Jontulovich said Carroll believed Henderson had shot him in 2007 and wound up killing Kikhiesha Brooks, a 21-year-old mother from Berkeley, who had been riding in his car that day.
(Henderson was never charged with that case.)
Several people, including Alexandria Davis and Gregg Fite, told police Carroll "acknowledged responsibility" for killing Henderson.
Davis had said Carroll told her to tell "her boyfriend" [Ware] that "his friend [Henderson] didn't make it," adding: "I knocked his ass down."
On the stand, Davis refuted the earlier claim and said she'd made things up out of anger due to "co-parenting" issues with Carroll.
The defense brushed off "the people who claim to know anything about this as mere products of the rumor mill."
Welch also argued that police should have done more over the years to corroborate the claims of Fite, Davis and a man named Brandon Wallace, including through call detail records, fingerprints, DNA and surveillance footage.
"Convicts, fraudsters, murderers," he told the jury. "Those are the persons that tipped in favor of bringing the case."
Emando Roos: Carroll "was like a brother to me"
One of the people who told police Carroll confessed to killing Henderson was Emando Roos, who testified early in the trial, on June 25.
Roos, who is from Berkeley, said he had known Carroll for more than 20 years.
"He was like a brother to me," Roos said. Roos also has a child with Carroll's cousin, he said.
Roos testified that he and Carroll had not talked in more than a decade — since they were charged with hatching an unsuccessful plan to kill a North Oakland gang associate who disrespected Carroll in a rap video.
Initially, Roos testified that he and Carroll had never spoken about crimes Carroll committed.
But a recorded interview with police from 2011 told a different story.
In the 2011 interview, Roos told police Carroll had called him while Roos was in prison saying he had shot "bitch ass Drew" on 98th Avenue.
According to the 2011 interview, Carroll also told Roos he only realized Henderson was in the car because someone else on the busy block had greeted him by name — facts that were consistent with other witness testimony during the trial.
During the recorded interview, Roos also told police Carroll had said the Acorn shooting of Ware had "something to do" with disrespect related to Carroll's "baby mama."
He told police Carroll said the Nehemiah Lewis shooting had been about disrespect as well.
Under cross-examination, Roos said he only spoke with police in 2011 because they had arrested him and threatened him with jail time.
Roos said police had asked him for information on Joe Carroll but said they "didn't need me to testify because they had his baby mama."
Roos also testified that OPD had fed him information off-camera and promised he would be released if he said what they wanted — allegations investigators denied.
The detectives had tried to get more detailed information from Roos but came up empty.
"The reality is, you didn't have the answers, correct?" defense attorney Todd Bequette asked Roos.
"True," he said.
Bequette said Roos "couldn't provide that information because you hadn't had that conversation with Mr. Carroll."
True, Roos said again.
Prosecutor Jontulovich pointed out that, according to the 2011 recording, Roos had said Nehemiah's name before police ever mentioned it.
"I didn't even know who Nehemiah was," Roos told her, because he had been in prison when the shooting happened.
Roos testified that it would have been impossible to talk to Carroll from prison because he didn't have a phone.
"Have you ever seen inmates have burner phones?" Jontulovich asked him.
"No," Roos said, adding, "I never had a phone."
"You never saw another inmate with a cellphone … that they smuggled into the prison?" the prosecutor asked.
"No," Roos said. "That's not any of my business."
Brandon Wallace: Alleged jail cell confessions
Toward the end of the trial, the prosecution also brought in Brandon Wallace, who is serving a prison sentence of 118 years to life for a Berkeley murder in 2010.
Wallace, who is now 35, got involved in the Carroll case after writing a letter to authorities in 2016 saying he had valuable information or could get it.
On the stand, Wallace said he grew up around gangs in South Berkeley and the Waterfront area, and met Carroll in 2004 before becoming friends with Coleon, Joe's younger brother.
Police later put Joe Carroll and Wallace together in a Berkeley jail cell, during which time Wallace said Carroll confessed to killing Ngo, Lewis and Henderson.
Police recorded their time in the jail cell — but the recording did not pick up the incriminating remarks.
Read more about gangs in Berkeley.
Wallace said the men had sometimes whispered or flushed the toilet to mask their voices and used tissues to cover a speaker in the room.
During his testimony, Wallace also corroborated various information others shared, speaking about the Berkeley-Oakland gang feud and how Fite had been a "shot caller" in Berkeley gang life in the early 2000s until Carroll took over.
Have I promised anything for your testimony? Jontulovich asked him.
"No, you actually made that pretty clear," Wallace said.
The defense cast doubt on the veracity of Wallace's claims, questioning why Carroll would have made those admissions, and noted that some of Wallace's details about the homicides were off.
Oakland wiretap spawns murder conspiracy case
The prosecution's case also included evidence from an OPD wiretap investigation in 2013 that Jontulovich said shed light on the ongoing feud between Berkeley and North Oakland and provided insight into Carroll's motives.
In the wiretap recordings, police said Carroll — who was living in Texas — was irate about being disrespected in a music video made by North Oakland rappers, along with other posts online.
Authorities said the recordings captured Carroll pressuring fellow Berkeley gang members to retaliate by killing a rival, and helping arm them to carry out the crime.
Police said they were able to foil the plot twice, thanks to the wiretap intel, by flooding the area with officers before the violence could happen.
Emilie Raguso
Carroll was originally charged in that case with conspiracy to commit murder but the charge was reduced through a plea deal to conspiracy to commit assault with a firearm in 2015.
Defense attorney Welch urged the jury to disregard the recordings and said they offered "no insight" into his client's mental state.
"That evidence was not intended to inform you in any way about motive or intent," Welch said. "It was simply to smear and frighten you into believing that Joseph Carroll is a monster."
The emotional phone calls from the wiretap case stood in stark contrast to Carroll's typical demeanor in court, where he has sat stone-faced for months.
Aside from speaking quietly with his attorneys or acknowledging supporters with barely perceptible nods, Carroll never seemed to utter a word or reveal what he might be thinking.
The only notable exception came last week, moments after a lengthy prosecution argument ended Monday around 4 p.m.
Before the defense could respond, Judge Chin announced that court would be in recess until the next morning.
(Court routinely ends by 4:30 p.m. and the defense argument that was set to come next was expected to take hours.)
When Carroll heard the judge's announcement, he struck the defense table and began gesturing emphatically.
"That's not right," he said repeatedly, as his attorneys immediately tried to settle him.
Their remarks were inaudible from the gallery, but Carroll continued to shift in his seat, rocking back on his chair in obvious irritation.
"I am frustrated, man," he told his lawyers.
Read more court coverage on The Scanner.
Carroll's outburst was a singular occurrence in what has otherwise been a tightly controlled and respectful environment overall, at least outwardly.
Throughout the months-long trial, Carroll had many family members and friends in the audience.
The mothers of Nehemiah Lewis and Andrew Henderson Jr. also attended the proceedings with members of their families.
Each group, those supporting Carroll and those present for the victims, was restricted to its own side of court and could not cross the aisle.
The two groups were released separately by deputies during recess and used separate elevators to leave the floor.
Still, the process wasn't entirely smooth.
At times during the proceedings, the prosecution expressed concern about sharing upcoming witness information and confidential records with the defense, citing "things that are happening outside of this courtroom … getting back to potential witnesses."
Jontulovich told the court in July that this had become a "more significant problem as time goes on" and was "infringing on this case and the cooperation of witnesses."
During a separate discussion before the court about certain records, Jontulovich made it clear that they would not be marked as exhibits or become public in any way. Defense counsel could not "provide a copy to anybody," she added.
Due to security concerns that reportedly arose, at least in part, after a Carroll supporter photographed or recorded a juror in the lead-up to the trial, the courtroom vestibule was outfitted with a metal detector in a highly unusual move.
All members of the public were required to show photo ID to enter the courtroom. No electronic devices were allowed in without a court order.
Jury deliberations in the Joseph Carroll case are set to resume Wednesday morning.
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Emilie RagusoEmilie Raguso
