OAKLAND — A day after he murdered a teen boy amid a feud between two warring gangs, Jacobi Gaines got on social media as he’d done frequently over the prior two weeks, authorities say.
On his Instagram page, then-18-year-old Gaines posted himself wearing the same red jacket that surveillance video depicted him wearing when he shot and killed 17-year-old Hasan Humphries. Then he posted a piece of a song, specifically with the lyrics, “we hit him in the chest first, then his head,” just as prosecutors say he had done to Humphries just one day earlier.
Gaines was convicted earlier this month of first degree murder, carjacking, robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, and gun possession, court records show. The Jan. 13, 2020 murder of Humphries marked the end of a six-week crime spree that included violent crimes and social media taunts that reignited a violent rivalry between two gangs, authorities said.
All told, prosecutors documented 14 alleged crimes involving Gaines, most of which occurred during a six-week span in 2019 to 2020.
It started in November 2019, when Gaines allegedly urinated on the gravestone of a 17-year-old Skyline High student named Keith Lawrence, and posted the video on Instagram.
Lawrence, shot and killed in Oakland in March 2017, was an alleged associate of the Case gang, a group that has longstanding rivalries with the West Oakland gang Ghost Town, of which Gaines is a member, police say. The taunting video caused the stir Gaines intended, with several Case members taking note and responding with threats and plots of their own, according to authorities.
Humphries was shot and killed while walking on the sidewalk of the 1400 block of 48th Avenue in Oakland at around 4:45 p.m. on Jan. 13, 2020. Police say Gaines was driving an Audi he’d previously stolen from a man attempting to sell the car online and that he pulled the car over, shot Humphries, and drove off.
He later posted to Instagram — and attempted to delete — vaguely worded alleged admissions to the crime, including a post that said “kill or be killed” and the one with the rap lyrics. The most incriminating evidence were photos of himself wearing the same jacket the shooter had worn, prosecutors say.
Three days after the murder, when police raided Gaines’ Union City home, they allegedly found the murder weapon outside a window of the residence, laying on the grass. They took Gaines into custody, where he has been ever since.
Gaines denied involvement in Humphries’ murder, writing in a pretrial motion that allowing the jacket matchup into evidence would cause him to be “convicted on false pretense of evidence not showing of fact.” Gaines also told police he wasn’t involved in the murder during an interview in 2020, authorities said.
When investigators asked him about urinating on Lawrence’s grave, he just laughed, prosecutors said.