A 37-year-old Oakland man is facing murder charges after prosecutors say he gunned down the longtime suspect in his brother's unsolved 2022 killing, despite a relative's attempt to talk him out of it. Ramon Watkins is accused of fatally shooting 26-year-old Jimmy Mullins on February 11 inside Mr. Phone Repair on International Boulevard, where Mullins sat on a couch next to his girlfriend when a gunman opened fire.
The Alameda County District Attorney's Office determined on Tuesday that it had enough evidence to charge Watkins with murder, gun possession by a felon, and two counts of dissuading a witness, according to The Mercury News. Watkins has pleaded not guilty and is being held without bail at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin. He is due back in court on August 20 for a preliminary hearing, when a judge will determine whether there is enough evidence for the charges to stand.
Police say the shooting was retaliation for the July 22, 2022 killing of Watkins' brother, 33-year-old Jamal Watkins, a security guard and father of four who was shot while driving near 82nd Avenue and E Street, causing his Hyundai to crash on the 8200 block of E Street, according to CBS News. Surveillance footage reportedly showed a man firing repeatedly into Jamal Watkins' car, and a second person engaged in a shootout with the shooter, per the Mercury News report. Investigators identified Jimmy Mullins as a longtime suspect in that killing, though court records show he was never charged in Jamal Watkins' death and refused to discuss the shooting when questioned.
A Brother's Grief, Years Without Answers
Jamal Watkins' mother, Tina Harris, publicly appealed for answers in October 2022, telling KTVU FOX 2 that her son was her only child and had been visiting family in Oakland when he became the city's 65th homicide victim that year. Oakland would go on to surpass 100 homicides before 2022 ended. Police have said Mullins allegedly admitted involvement in Jamal Watkins' killing while in custody, and a relative of Jamal Watkins told investigators that Mullins had bragged about the murder.
That same relative tried to talk Ramon Watkins out of seeking revenge, according to the Mercury News, a detail that underscores how close the family came to averting the shooting that followed. Watkins was first arrested on suspicion of murdering Mullins in March, but he was released without charges at the time due to insufficient evidence. The five-month gap between that release and the August 4 charging decision left the case in limbo while prosecutors built their case.
Stripped of His Guns Before He Died
Mullins had accumulated firearm possession convictions in four of the past five years, including 2021, 2022, 2024, and 2025. A month before he was killed, police raided his Oakland home and seized three guns along with his cellphone, according to Facebook posts documenting the case, leaving him unarmed when the fatal shooting happened. Authorities said Mullins was unarmed at the time of his death, and he had reportedly arrived at an Oakland hospital with a gunshot wound while police were still processing the scene of Jamal Watkins' 2022 homicide — a detail suggesting Mullins was also injured that night. Police had separately arrested Mullins on an outstanding gun possession warrant tied to the raid.
Watkins himself carries prior convictions for evading police and assault. He also faces unrelated legal trouble in San Francisco, where he was arrested in February during a San Francisco Human Trafficking Task Force operation and charged with pimping and pandering after allegedly attempting to flee officers, as reported by Hoodline. He was held on $100,000 bail in that case before his Alameda County murder arrest.
What Watkins Could Face
The witness dissuasion charges Watkins faces fall under California Penal Code Section 136.1, which treats intimidating a witness or victim as a wobbler offense carrying up to four years in state prison per count when charged as a felony, according to the Shouse Law Group. Separately, the felon-in-possession charge stems from Penal Code Section 29800, which imposes a mandatory lifetime firearm ban and a prison sentence of 16 months, two years, or three years for anyone with a prior felony conviction found to own or possess a gun, per My Rights Law.
A Case That Cuts Against Oakland's Progress
The killing unfolded on a stretch of International Boulevard that Hoodline covered at the time in its report, initial coverage of the shooting, when officers responding at 6:45 p.m. under incident report 26-006571 found Mullins dead at the scene. The case lands amid a broader citywide shift: Oakland homicides fell from 120 in 2022 and 126 in 2023 to just 67 in 2025, the lowest total in 25 years, a drop public safety leaders largely credited to retaliatory-violence deterrence under the city's Ceasefire initiative, according to The Guardian.
Yet cases like this one illustrate why that progress remains fragile. Oakland police homicide clearance rates have dropped as low as 29% in prior years, well below the statewide average of over 60%, and criminologists note that gap often fuels cycles of retaliatory street violence when families are left without answers for years, per Wikipedia's entry on crime in Oakland. Jamal Watkins' killing went unsolved for more than three years before his alleged killer was himself shot dead, and now his brother sits in jail accused of pulling the trigger.
