A 31-year-old Pittsburg man convicted of murdering a 15-year-old girl during a 2012 East Oakland gang shootout is now facing 11 new felony charges after authorities say he carjacked and robbed a 23-year-old man at gunpoint in East Oakland. Lilron Ravon Jones, released from prison in April, is being held without bail at Santa Rita Jail as prosecutors pursue charges including kidnapping to commit robbery, carjacking, second-degree robbery, first-degree residential robbery and first-degree ATM robbery.
According to The Mercury News, Jones approached the victim while the man sat in a parked Tesla outside his East Oakland home, holding a pistol as he walked up. Police say the robbery occurred on a Sunday around 5:40 p.m., and that Jones forced the victim into his own house, where he took a PlayStation 5, roughly $1,000 worth of designer shoes and other property. Jones also allegedly drove the victim to a bank near Lake Merritt and made him withdraw cash from an ATM.
Investigators say Jones threatened to shoot the victim if he tried to flee, and separately warned he would return to shoot up the victim's house and kill him if he called 911. Police eventually located the stolen Tesla using tracking devices and arrested Jones near Chase and Willow streets in West Oakland. Authorities recovered some of the victim's stolen property along with a gun believed to have been used in the crimes, and Jones declined to speak with investigators. He has four prior felony convictions, including murder and attempted murder.
A Killing That Shook East Oakland in 2012
Jubrille Jordan, 15, was shot and killed near 66th Avenue and Lion Way during what police described as an East Oakland gang war in December 2012, according to SFGate. The gunfire also wounded a 14-year-old boy in the leg — the intended target of the shooting, per that outlet's reporting. Investigators later found 20 spent shell casings at the scene, according to the Berkeley Scanner.
Jones was 17 at the time and, per mercurynews.com, prosecutors said he fired a gun during the encounter that left Jordan dead. He was arrested in November 2014. A jury convicted Jones and Vijay Bhushan of first-degree murder and attempted murder in March 2015; Marquise Thompson was awaiting trial at the time. Bhushan was sentenced to 34 years to life, while Jones was sentenced to 114 years in prison.
Years Of Legal Wrangling Over His Sentence
Because Jones was a juvenile at the time of the shooting, his case became entangled in years of appeals tied to California's evolving juvenile-justice rules. An appellate court ordered his case sent back to juvenile court for a transfer hearing to determine whether he should be tried as an adult at all, a process shaped by the 2016 passage of Proposition 57, which changed how juveniles could be charged as adults, mercurynews.com reported.
In 2023, then-District Attorney Pamela Price maneuvered to keep Jones's case in juvenile court, a move that could have reduced his sentence by roughly 100 years. Jubrille Jordan's brother, Justin Young, said he felt pushed into a corner by Price during their initial meeting about the case. A judge ultimately sent the case back to adult court in 2024.
That same year, following a resentencing request from Price's office and Jones's attorney, Jones was resentenced to 16 years in prison on manslaughter, attempted second-degree murder and unlawful firearm activity charges. Alameda County Judge Thomas Stevens called the move the best option among many bad options, saying Jones had a disastrous childhood — he was shot by his brother at age 5 and watched his mother go to prison when he was 14. Stevens said Jones had expressed remorse and taken responsibility for the 2012 killing and described him as a very different person, though he assessed Jones's rehabilitation as average, perhaps a B or B-plus, and said his disciplinary record had not been impressive. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation had previously listed Jones as eligible for parole in 2055, before the resentencing changed his sentence, per the Berkeley Scanner.
Carjackings Have Been Trending Down Citywide
Jones's new arrest comes as Oakland's carjacking numbers have been moving in the opposite direction. Reported carjackings in the city fell 47% during the first half of 2025 compared with the same period the year before, while robberies dropped 41%, according to a report from Hoodline. Nationally, carjacking incidents across major U.S. cities fell 73% compared with peak levels recorded in 2023, per a midyear 2026 Council on Criminal Justice update cited in that report.
A state-Oakland enforcement partnership recovered 3,578 stolen vehicles and made 2,101 arrests between February 2024 and mid-2025, according to figures from the governor's office referenced in the same Hoodline report. That broader crackdown followed a separate East Oakland case in which police said a victim was carjacked near 42nd Avenue and International Boulevard in July, leading to a standoff arrest of a different suspect — a convicted felon on probation who faced multiple felonies, authorities said at the time.
