Jose Amaya-Ramos was standing at a chicken stand on the 3400 block of Foothill Boulevard on May 12, 2022, waiting for his food, when four robbers descended on the small East Oakland business. By the time they fled, they had taken a total of $110 from workers at the stand — and Amaya-Ramos, a 22-year-old customer who had done nothing but wait for a meal, was dead.
According to The Mercury News, police say the robbers believed a large amount of cash was hidden at the stand. Instead, they got $60 from one worker and $50 from another. Amaya-Ramos resisted the robbers, and police say 31-year-old Devon Askew, now identified by investigators as the shooter, killed him as the group fled the scene. Surveillance footage examined after the shooting, as reported by CBS News, showed Amaya-Ramos was shot in the head as a friend picked up a lug nut wrench to resist the four robbers, prompting a gunman to fire blindly behind him while running away.
The food stand had been targeted before. Its owner told CBS News off-camera in 2022 that his business and workers had been robbed and shot at multiple times earlier that year, before the fatal holdup that killed Amaya-Ramos. In the aftermath, the Oakland Police Department and Crime Stoppers of Oakland offered a reward of up to $17,500 for information leading to the identification and arrest of the suspects, according to the same CBS News report.
A Cold Case Cracked by an Anonymous Tip
Askew was not arrested until last October, when he was taken into custody in Sacramento, according to court records cited by the Mercury News. He now faces murder and robbery charges and has pleaded not guilty. He remains held on a no-bail hold as he awaits a preliminary hearing.
Police say Askew had three accomplices. An anonymous tip started the identification of other suspects, court records show, eventually pointing investigators to 22-year-old Albert Bagwell, who was arrested on suspicion of robbery five months after the shooting, in October 2022. Bagwell later pleaded no contest to robbery and was sentenced to three years in state prison. He claimed he used a fake gun during the robbery but said his accomplices had real firearms, per court records referenced in the Mercury News report.
A second alleged accomplice, 31-year-old Kenneth Watkins, was charged alongside Askew in 2023. Watkins pleaded no contest to accessory, and his plea deal was finalized last November, resulting in a two-year prison sentence. A fourth alleged accomplice, who was a juvenile at the time of the 2022 shooting, was prosecuted separately in juvenile court for unrelated felonies, authorities said.
A Disgraced Detective's Shadow Over the Case
Complicating the prosecution is the involvement of Phong Tran, a former Oakland police detective who played a role in the investigation. Tran now faces charges of coercing witnesses into giving false or invented statements, and Askew's lawyer has filed a motion seeking records on Tran, according to the Mercury News.
Tran's legal troubles trace back to a separate 2011 murder case. In March 2023, a judge vacated the 2016 murder convictions of Giovonte Douglas and Cartier Hunter, freeing them after roughly 10 years in prison, after a key witness recanted and testified Tran had paid her thousands of dollars to lie, as reported by The Oaklandside. The following month, the Alameda County District Attorney's Office and the Northern California Innocence Project launched a systematic review of at least 125 homicide cases investigated by Tran.
Allegations against Tran have already led to other murder convictions being overturned, along with dismissals and relatively lenient plea deals in separate cases, the Mercury News reports. Prosecutors have conceded that Tran's work on certain investigations was problematic, even as they have proceeded with other ongoing homicide cases he worked on. Tran's own criminal prosecution hit a major obstacle earlier this year when the star witness, Aisha Weber, disappeared after telling investigators she intended to move somewhere she could not be found, according to The Berkeley Scanner — a development Hoodline previously reported threatened his bribery trial. Tran's lawyer has said the charges against his client are trumped up and that Tran will be vindicated in the end.
Why Accomplices Can Face Murder Charges Too
Under California Penal Code § 187, a defendant who participates in a felony robbery where a death occurs can be prosecuted for first-degree felony murder even if they were not the shooter and did not intend for anyone to die, according to the Shouse Law Group. That legal framework helps explain why multiple participants in a robbery that yielded just $110 have faced homicide-related charges or accessory pleas, even those who did not fire a weapon.
The killing occurred during a period when Oakland was in the grip of a violent crime spike, with the city recording 121 homicides in 2022. At the time, the Oakland Police Department was also suffering from severe staffing shortages, with only 699 sworn officers relying heavily on mandatory overtime to maintain patrols in East Oakland, as reported by CBS News. Violent crime in Oakland has since dropped significantly; the Oaklandside reported homicides fell 21% and armed robberies dropped 42% through late 2025 compared with the prior year, mirroring a statewide decline in homicide rates that CalMatters has also documented.
As Askew's case moves toward a preliminary hearing, the fight over Tran's role in the original investigation is likely to remain central. Hoodline has previously reported on how the scandal complicates Oakland murder cases more broadly, as defense attorneys across the county continue pushing to exclude evidence gathered during Tran's tenure on the force.
