BERKELEY — A man who is on supervised release after serving a federal prison sentence for murder is back in legal trouble, this time over a traffic stop where police allegedly found a gun in his girlfriend’s purse.
Aquil Peterson, 40, was arrested in a Sept. 30 traffic stop where both he and his girlfriend were described by police as being heavily intoxicated in the vehicle, slurring their words and smelling like alcohol. Peterson was the driver and his girlfriend was a passenger, police said.
Peterson was arrested on suspicion of possessing 12 grams of crack cocaine and seven grams of heroin, divided into individual bindles, and his girlfriend was arrested for allegedly having an unregistered pistol in her purse. She is also a convicted felon, police said.
Federal prosecutors in the Bay Area have filed a petition to revoke Peterson’s supervised release. His next court hearing has been set for Tuesday, records show.
In 2008, Peterson was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison for the Aug. 23, 2002 murder of Joseph Hearns in San Francisco, records show. It was a brutal killing where Peterson, armed with an AK-47, kidnapped Hearns, stripped him of his clothes and shot him in the head, according to media reports at the time.
The murder charge was part of a racketeering case aimed at the Page Street Mob, a San Francisco-based gang.