A 23-year-old South Los Angeles man pleaded guilty this week to a violent robbery spree that spanned Gardena, Carson and Newport Beach, admitting he shot two victims and beat a woman so badly during a casino parking lot robbery that some of her teeth broke. Oshae Pollard now faces at least 10 years in federal prison, with a maximum possible sentence of life behind bars.
According to prosecutors, the spree began on August 25, 2024, in the parking lot of the Hustler Casino in Gardena, where Pollard took $1,000 from a victim, pushed a woman to the ground, pulled on her purse, and shoved a gun into her mouth while threatening to kill her if she shouted for help. As reported by MyNewsLA.com, that assault left the woman with broken teeth. Pollard pleaded guilty to interference with commerce by robbery and to possessing and using a weapon to commit a violent crime.
A String of Attacks in a Single Day
Just hours later, in the early morning of August 26, 2024, Pollard and an accomplice targeted a taxi driver sitting in his cab outside a Winchell's Donut House in Carson, according to the Los Angeles Times. Pollard and his accomplice pointed a two-toned handgun at the driver, demanded his wallet and Samsung cellphone, and struck him in the face before robbing him at gunpoint, prosecutors said.
That same day, Pollard and another robber moved on to the Fashion Island parking lot in Newport Beach, where they held two drivers at gunpoint next to a Rolls-Royce SUV and a Ferrari. The pair took an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak watch, a monogrammed Berluti wallet and Rolls-Royce car keys worth about $44,000 combined, prosecutors said, and fired a bullet into the second victim's Ferrari as he tried to speed away. Hoodline previously covered the Fashion Island ambush before Pollard had been identified or arrested.
Shots Fired Outside Bloomingdale's
The violence continued nearly a month later. On September 22, 2024, Pollard attempted to rob a victim of a Lamborghini Urus and tried to carjack another driver in the South Coast Plaza parking lot outside Bloomingdale's, prosecutors said. When that driver refused to hand over his watch, ring and car, Pollard shot him twice, once in the hand and once in the thigh, as the man tried to remove his watch.
Pollard, who is from Los Angeles, was arrested on October 16, 2024, and was indicted by a federal grand jury that December. He has remained in federal custody continuously since then, according to the Department of Justice. U.S. District Judge Fred W. Slaughter has scheduled Pollard's sentencing for January 21, 2027, when he will face the mandatory 10-year minimum on top of a statutory maximum that reaches life in prison, per the Department of Justice.
Federal Task Force Tied Cases Across County Lines
The case was cracked by the ATF Orange County Violent Crime Task Force, a joint federal-local effort that pulled together federal agents with officers from the Brea, Placentia, Fullerton, Newport Beach and Costa Mesa police departments, the Department of Justice said. That cross-jurisdictional structure allowed investigators to connect robberies that unfolded across both Los Angeles and Orange counties within a single 24-hour period.
Federal prosecutors brought the case under Operation Safe Cities, a Southern California initiative the Department of Justice launched in March 2024 to target violent repeat offenders and armed robbery crews, a program Hoodline reported on when it was first launched to fight violent crime. By filing federal charges, prosecutors were able to consolidate incidents from Gardena, Carson, Newport Beach and Costa Mesa into one indictment in Santa Ana federal court rather than pursuing separate local cases.
Orange County District Attorney's Office spokesperson Kimberly Edds said following Pollard's arrest that violent armed sprees like this one terrorize local communities and force shoppers to consider whether a trip to the mall could erupt in gunfire, according to CBS News. The case was prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California, the nation's most populous federal judicial district, serving nearly 20 million residents across seven counties.
Court records reference accomplices who assisted Pollard during the Carson and Fashion Island robberies, but their identities and legal status remain an open question. It is also unclear exactly how Judge Slaughter's eventual sentence, due in January 2027, will weigh the firearm discharges and injuries inflicted across the multi-county spree.
