OAKLAND — Jamel Tousant Sr. has addressed his son’s suspected killers twice — once on the streets with a gun, then in court a decade later with a message of forgiveness.
There was a lot of turmoil along the way, all stemming from a simple chain robbery during a Berkeley gang feud. The aftermath of the April 28, 2015 killing of 21-year-old Jamel Tousant Jr. led to an undercover Oakland police car being ambushed and shot up, Tousant Sr. going on a vigilante shooting spree to avenge his son’s death while simultaneously tipping off the cops and the arrest of a suspect, Hugles Blackwell, five years after the homicide.
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Tousant Sr. recounted an epiphany that moved him to Christianity, then told Blackwell he forgave him.
“Today is the day for me to stand up as a man, and I’m here to forgive Mr. Blackwell … God told me to do something positive and save some kids,” Tousant Sr. said, later adding that “the whole pain in my heart was just released” when he realized this. “I miss my child every day. I hurt every day, but … I’m tired of being negative. I just want something positive out of this. I want to smile again.”
In his closing remarks, Tousant Sr. noted that the same prosecutor who was handling Blackwell’s case had also “sent me to prison” a decade ago, in the aftermath of his son’s death.
Tousant Jr.’s mother spoke next, but her perspective was starkly different.
“He murdered my son in cold blood, and the way that it was done showed the kind of person he is,” she said of Blackwell. “He is a cold-hearted killer, with no remorse, no soul. He is soulless.”
Tousant Jr., an Antioch resident, was shot and killed while driving down the 1400 block of 90th Avenue at International Boulevard in East Oakland. Police say a car pulled up alongside him and someone opened fire from it, killing him. The shooting was attributed to a feud between two North Oakland/Berkeley gangs known as Waterfront and the Five Finga Mafia, which had been exacerbated by a gang member being robbed of a jeweled chain days earlier.
Oakland police hit the streets hoping to stop the gang feud, but ended up being the next victims of violence. An undercover police squad was surveilling an area in West Oakland when they were accosted and shot at by a group of people who apparently suspected the vehicle belonged to rivals, not cops. One of the suspects was Robert Blackwell III, Hugles Blackwell’s brother, and he was sentenced to 10 years in state prison for the shooting, court records show.
Meanwhile, Tousant Sr. was plotting his revenge. He shot a then-35-year-old man in the leg in August 2015, while aiming at a group of men he blamed for his son’s death, authorities said. Police found multiple guns and ballistic vests in his possession during a search two weeks later.
Once in police custody, Tousant Sr. took a different tack — if he couldn’t kill his son’s killers, he could at least help imprison them. He told an Oakland homicide investigator that Hugles Blackwell had been at a dice game where his son was shortly before the homicide, and believed that Blackwell had helped trail and kill him afterward, police testified at Blackwell’s preliminary hearing.
Police believed the tip and acted on it, but nothing came of the investigation for years. The major break came when an eyewitness to the shooting identified Blackwell, but with that came another quirk in the case. Once Blackwell was charged, prosecutors took extraordinary steps to protect the man’s identity, obtaining a court order to keep it from Blackwell and allowing cops to testify about the man using the pseudonym “John Doe.”
Police investigators and prosecutors routinely name informants in court filings and testimony — they named Tousant Sr. as a tipster in the preliminary hearing, for instance — and it’s unclear why Doe was afforded this special treatment. But Doe’s involvement was a big reason why Blackwell accepted a plea deal, his lawyer said in a statement.
“Mr. Blackwell decided to resolve this case to ensure that he gets back to his family as soon as possible,” the defense lawyer, Jeff Wozniak, said. “This has been a long road and Mr. Blackwell did not want to risk a life sentence based on the testimony of one witness.”
Blackwell will receive credit for the five years he spent in jail while the case was pending.
As for Robert Blackwell III, 35, he was granted an early release from prison in his 10-year sentence for shooting up a cop car. But in a final bitter twist, police identified him as the man who shot up a police vehicle in West Oakland earlier this year. The officer inside was not struck by the bullets that hit his car, and now Blackwell is facing attempted murder charges and a potential life sentence.
Prosecutors contend that Robert Blackwell III was out to kill a cop that night, but didn’t care which one he shot. The shooting occurred occurred a little after midnight on Feb. 10, barely three days after Hugles Blackwell was formally sentenced to prison and listened to Tousant Sr.’s message of forgiveness.
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