A 40-year-old Sonora man was left with multiple gunshot wounds after a shooting in an Oakdale alley late Sunday night, and within days, investigators had tracked two suspects nearly 200 miles away to Carson City, Nevada, where both were taken into custody. The wounded man is expected to make a full recovery, but the case has already spilled across county and state lines, pulling in residents of three separate communities scattered across Northern California's Central Valley and Sierra foothills.
According to CBS Sacramento, police responded around 10:30 p.m. on September 6 to an alley along South First Avenue in Oakdale, where they found the Sonora man suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. Officers transported him to a local hospital, and investigators have since identified 34-year-old Michael Romero-Porter of Riverbank and 25-year-old Chelsie Williams of Oakdale as suspects in the shooting, the station reports.
Investigators tracked the pair to Carson City, Nevada, where they were located and taken into custody on September 9, according to the same report. Police said the two were arrested in Nevada in connection with the Oakdale shooting, though the outlet's account does not specify what led investigators to that city.
Charges Stack Up Against Both Suspects
Romero-Porter faces one count of attempted murder along with multiple weapons-related charges, the station's report states. Under California Penal Code Sections 187 and 664, attempted murder can carry a sentence ranging from five, seven, or nine years in state prison up to life with the possibility of parole, depending on whether prosecutors establish the act was willful, deliberate, and premeditated, according to Power Trial Lawyers.
Williams faces an attempted murder charge as well as accessory-after-the-fact and battery charges, per the same account. Being an accessory after the fact is what's known as a wobbler offense under California Penal Code Section 32, meaning it can be charged as either a felony punishable by up to three years in state prison or a misdemeanor carrying up to a year in county jail, according to the Kraut Law Group.
Because both suspects were arrested outside California, getting them back to face charges is not automatic. Interstate extradition procedures under the Uniform Criminal Extradition Act require out-of-state suspects to either sign a waiver of extradition or go through formal governor's warrant proceedings before they can be transported across state lines, according to FindLaw. It remains unclear whether Romero-Porter and Williams will waive extradition or whether the case will require that longer formal process.
A Shooting That Touched Three Communities
The case links three distinct corners of the region. Oakdale, where the shooting happened, is a Stanislaus County city of 23,246 residents known by the slogan “Cowboy Capital of the World,” per Data Commons. Riverbank, where Romero-Porter lives, sits roughly 8 miles west of Oakdale along State Route 108, while Sonora, home to the 40-year-old victim, is the Tuolumne County seat located about 28 miles east of Oakdale in the Sierra Nevada foothills — with State Route 108 serving as the main road connecting all three towns.
The alley near South First Avenue where the shooting occurred sits in a stretch of downtown Oakdale that has drawn municipal attention in recent years, including infrastructure work tied to the Southwest Downtown Safe Routes to School Project and use as a National Night Out community event site in August 2024, according to the Oakdale Leader. The area is described as a mix of residential buildings and commercial properties near the city's downtown core.
The Oakdale Police Department, headquartered at 285 North Third Avenue, said the investigation remains active and ongoing despite the arrests in Nevada. Annual crime reporting compiled by the department has historically shown Oakdale's overall violent crime levels running below its own five-year departmental averages, according to earlier reporting from the Oakdale Leader, a detail that underscores how unusual a shooting of this severity is for the city.
What Investigators Still Don't Know
What led to the shooting, and how the Sonora victim came to be in that Oakdale alley with two suspects from neighboring towns, has not been made public. CBS Sacramento's report does not detail a motive or describe any relationship between the victim and the two suspects, leaving that as an open question for investigators as the case moves forward.
Anyone with information on the case can still reach out through Stanislaus Area Crime Stoppers, which offers anonymous tip channels and potential cash rewards for information on unsolved felony crimes across the county. It's the kind of case that, for now, raises more questions than it answers — even with two suspects already behind bars in Nevada.
The shooting comes roughly a month after Hoodline reported on a double shooting near Woodward Reservoir, just north of Oakdale, another reminder that gun violence, while statistically rare in this stretch of Stanislaus County, has surfaced more than once in recent months.
