Four people accused of a fatal shooting last June of a Los Angeles-area man who was allegedly pimping a teenage girl were ordered today to stand trial in San Francisco Superior Court on murder charges, prosecutors said.
Calvin Sneed, 22, of Compton, was shot shortly before 2 a.m. on June 4 near Meade and Le Conte avenues in San Francisco’s Bayview District.
Sneed was allegedly pimping an underage girl whose parents, Lupe Mercado and Barry Gilton, are two of the four suspects charged with the shooting.
Prosecutors said Gilton, along with his cousin Antonio Gilton and Alfonso Williams, drove alongside Sneed’s car and shot him in the head. Sneed crashed into a parked car and died at a hospital later that morning.
Prosecutors said that Mercado, who was not in the car, called Barry Gilton minutes before the murder.
The four were ordered to stand trial by Judge Bruce Chan this morning on charges of murder, conspiracy to commit murder and discharging a firearm at an occupied vehicle, district attorney’s office spokesman Alex Bastian said.
Barry and Antonio Gilton and Williams were also held to answer on charges of possession of a firearm by a felon, Bastian said.
An enhancement alleging that Barry Gilton personally fired the gun was rejected by Chan, according to Bastian.
Tony Tamburello, who represented Mercado, said he was “disappointed in the judge’s decision.”
Tamburello said, “The prosecution argued that a phone call she made, without even knowing the contents, to her husband was a call that implicated her in the conspiracy and that she directed everybody to set the killing in motion.”
He said, “This is ludicrous speculation that no jury on this planet will ever accept as a way of convicting a mother of four children that she was involved in a conspiracy.”
Prosecutors have also alleged that Mercado and Barry Gilton traveled to Southern California and, on May 27, found Sneed in North Hollywood, where Gilton fired a gun at him.
The four will return to court on March 27 to be formally arraigned on the charges, he said.
Dan McMenamin, Bay City News
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