Charles Arnett Stevens
Facts of the Crime:
Oakland Police Sgt. Brian Thiem and his partner responded early one morning in 1989 to I-580, where California Highway Patrol officers checking a crashed car had found the driver shot to death. The homicide investigators soon found themselves on a serial killer’s trail.
By the time it was over, four people — Leslie Noyer, 29; Laquan Sloan, 16; Lori Rochon, 36; and Raymond August, 28 — would be dead, and at least six others would have narrowly escaped death. Noyer and Sloan were slain while standing on streets near I-580, Rochon and August as they drove the freeway. The random shootings, from April through July of that year, held the city transfixed in terror.
The case broke with bravery and luck, when Rodney Stokes, 24 — an I-580 motorist at whom Stevens, riding alongside in his own car, had shot but missed moments before — shut off his headlights and tailed the assailant as he fatally shot August in the wee hours of Thursday, July 27, 1989. Stokes watched the shooter exit the freeway and then park on the opposite side’s onramp to watch police arrive; Stokes pointed the car out to police, who nabbed Stevens, 20, right there with his .357-caliber Desert Eagle semiautomatic handgun.
Stevens was sentenced to death in Alameda County on July 30, 1993.
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