Case suspended against Oakland murder defendant who allegedly claimed cartel and Philippine president were following him

OAKLAND — Criminal proceeds have been suspended against a man accused of fatally shooting a motorist after a brief interaction in a parking lot last year, court records show.

At a court hearing last week, the lawyer for 24-year-old Ginrhic Bernadino-Santiago openly declared a doubt to his client’s mental competency for a criminal trial. A doctor has now been assigned to the case to evaluate Bernadino-Santiago’s mental health, and the case won’t move forward in the meantime. If he’s found mentally incompetent for trial, he could be transferred from jail to a mental institution.

Bernadino-Santiago is accused of murdering Francisco Torres-Felix, 59, in an Aug. 8, 2023 shooting at the parking lot of the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline in Oakland. Authorities say Bernadino-Santiago was already parked when Torres-Felix pulled up next to him, and that shots rang out after a brief interaction.

“I was in the Navy. So I fired weapons before. So I know what gunshots sound like,” one eyewitness to the shooting testified.

Multiple eyewitnesses were present for the shooting, and police were able to identify Bernadino-Santiago through the vehicle he drove that day, according to testimony at the preliminary hearing.

When he was arrested, Bernadino-Santiago allegedly told police that a Filipino drug cartel had been following him since he was 12, and that it had something to do with the president of the Philippines, as well as his father, who worked as a police officer there. He also claimed that the shooting was in self-defense and that Torres-Felix had a gun, but also claimed that the shooting was over “offensive” things the victim said, according to police.

“He changed his statement a few times,” East Bay Regional Parks police Detective Christopher Rudy testified at the preliminary hearing.

The reference to drugs and Torres-Felix being armed are both notable, because court records show that Torres-Felix served a federal prison sentence for selling cocaine, stemming from a $1 million drug bust in Oakland in 2007. That day, he had a firearm in his vehicle, just as Bernadino-Santiago allegedly told police, but prosecutors say the gun was wedged in between two seats and that he couldn’t have easily grabbed it.

It remains unclear whether there was any linkage between both men other than their brief interaction that day.

The defense argued at the preliminary hearing that Bernadino-Santiago — a security guard with no criminal history — had fired in self-defense. Judge Delia Trevino disagreed and upheld the charge, paving the way for a potential trial, but did not comment directly on the evidence, according to a transcript of the hearing.

At what was supposed to be Bernadino-Santiago’s arraignment, his attorney formally declared a doubt to mental competency, pausing the case until further notice.