A 23-year-old man accused of gunning down Johnathan Carballo on International Boulevard in 2023 will spend eight years in prison after his murder case collapsed into a mistrial and was ultimately resolved with a no contest plea to burglary. Marco Leiva-Saucedo was sentenced in May 2026, more than two and a half years after Oakland police first tied him to the killing of the 25-year-old Carballo.
Carballo died in August 2023 after what has been described as an argument about loud music, according to The Mercury News. Oakland police responded to the shooting in the 2300 block of International Boulevard after Carballo was killed, while a second man was taken to a hospital in stable condition, according to the Oakland Police Department.
Leiva-Saucedo was arrested on October 11, 2023, per the Mercury News report, though Alameda County prosecutors initially charged him with illegal firearm possession rather than murder, a decision that foreshadowed how the case would eventually turn out, according to the National Gun Violence Memorial, citing the East Bay Times. Hoodline previously reported his arrest in November 2023.
Mistrial Before the Plea
Leiva-Saucedo went to trial for murder in September 2025, but jurors were unable to agree on a verdict and the judge declared a mistrial, the Mercury News reported. His attorney had argued he was innocent, and Leiva-Saucedo himself insisted he did not kill anyone, telling the court he had simply found a pistol near the homicide scene. He remained jailed while prosecutors and his defense negotiated a resolution.
That resolution came in May 2026, when Leiva-Saucedo pleaded no contest to burglary — a charge that avoided criminal liability directly tied to the homicide — and was sentenced to eight years in state prison, with credit for time already spent in jail. He was later transferred to Pleasant Valley State Prison in June 2026, per the same account.
A Grieving Mother’s Words
Carballo’s family submitted victim impact statements focused on honoring his memory rather than the legal maneuvering that ended the case without a murder conviction. His mother wrote, “Your absence hurts me. My soul is shattered because I cannot see you or hear your voice.”
One Gun, Two Killings
A second Oakland homicide occurred weeks later. On September 27, 2023, 25-year-old Walter Mancia Menjivar was fatally shot outside a hotel on International Boulevard, less than a month after Carballo was killed along the same corridor, according to Crime Solvers Central.
Oakland police arrested 21-year-old Maricela Urias-Martinez in connection with the fatal shooting of her ex-boyfriend Mancia Menjivar, according to SFist. Before his death, Mancia Menjivar had been arrested during a traffic stop in Belmont where officers seized drugs and two weapons, per CBS San Francisco.
Hoodline identified the Oakland Police Department’s Crime Gun Intelligence Center and Violent Crime Operations Center as participating units.
Plea Deals Under Political Scrutiny
The outcome for Leiva-Saucedo came as judges had rejected proposed plea bargains for murder defendants in other multi-homicide cases, according to The Berkeley Scanner, a dynamic the SF Standard also documented when a proposed plea deal in a separate triple-murder case was shot down in 2023.
The case also closed against a backdrop of falling violence citywide. Oakland recorded 125 homicides in 2023 before a sharp multi-year decline, falling to 82 in 2024 and 67 total homicides in 2025, according to KTVU. Oakland also published crime statistics for the first half of 2025. According to the City of Oakland, homicides were down 21% in the first half of 2025. Oakland Police Department’s Annual Crime Report 2023 includes clearance-rate data for homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault. According to the City of Oakland’s 2024 Safe Oakland Streets annual report, safety improvements included speed bumps, the International Boulevard Quick Build and complex paving projects. The broader discussion also touched on Oakland’s homicide and property-crime clearance rates.
