MARTINEZ — The first words jurors heard on Thursday came from 29-year-old Rashanda Franklin, spoken moments before she was shot and killed nearly eight years ago, while her son watched in horror.
“My ex-boyfriend is stalking me,” Franklin told a 911 dispatcher as Lawyer McBride allegedly maneuvered his Mercedes to block Franklin into the parking lot of the Richmond church where her three sons attended school. A few minutes later, in a different part of the city, Franklin called 911 again.
“Can you please stop? I’ve got kids in the car?” Franklin says on the recording, her voice rising. Then she yells again, “Stop.”
These would be her last words. A few moments later, McBride allegedly shot her in the head as she reflexively raised her hand. The last part of the 911 call contains nothing but ear-piercing screams from two of Franklins’ sons, then aged 9 and 5, who witnessed it all.
“This case is about a woman’s worst nightmare,” Contra Costa Deputy District Attorney Dana Filkowski told jurors in her opening statement Thursday morning. Then she launched into the story, recounting a rocky two-year relationship between McBride and Franklin that Filkowski said ended a month before Franklin was killed.
From that point in March 2017, McBride allegedly followed Franklin around, assaulted her once, showed up at her mom and sister’s home looking for her and, finally, shot her dead on April 4, 2017.
The shooting happened around 8:40 a.m. at the intersection of Rheem Avenue and 29th Street.
McBride, 51, of San Pablo, was arrested shortly after the homicide, but it has taken nearly eight years of litigation to get to the start of McBride’s murder trial Thursday morning. In her opening statement, Deputy Public Defender Maya Nordberg stopped short of predicting a full acquittal, saying only that she believed jurors would “reject” the prosecution’s notion that Franklin’s death was premeditated murder.
Nordberg also said the relationship between McBride and Franklin was “complicated” and that they’d break up and reunite frequently. She said McBride always had a gun in his car, in case jurors were wondering why he was carrying one the day of the homicide.
But Filkowski said that on April 3, 2017, Richmond police Officer Thomas Peterson searched McBride after watching him roll through a stop sign in his Mercedes, while driving on a suspended license, and didn’t find a gun on McBride or in his car. That same night, Peterson responded to a call to police from Franklin and showed up to her mother’s Richmond home, only to find McBride on the front porch.
This time, Peterson allowed McBride to leave and told him, “sternly,” to accept that his relationship was over and move on, before offering to help Franklin obtain a restraining order. Her plan on April 4, 2017 was to go through with the restraining order, after she’d allowed a previous emergency protective order — taken after McBride allegedly struck Franklin outside her sons’ school — to lapse.
“Mr. McBride had his own plan,” Filkowski said, and he knew exactly where she’d be the following morning. After allegedly blocking her Jeep Cherokee into the church parking lot, McBride continued to follow her around Richmond. Franklin didn’t know he had a gun until an instant before he shot her, Filkowski said.
“She has no idea her life is about to end,” Filkowski said of Franklin’s final moments. “She still thinks she can reason with him.”
The shooting was caught on camera from local residents’ security cameras, and people who lived nearby rushed to help as McBride fled. They were able to get Franklin’s kids out of the Jeep, as it continued to roll forward after Franklin was shot, Filkowski said.
After Franklin’s death, the two interactions between Peterson and Franklin led to controversy and accusations by then-police Capt. Mark Gagan that officers had failed to do everything they could to assist Franklin on the evening of April 3. Peterson was cleared of violating department policy or failing to exercise duty by an internal review, but Gagan maintained that they could have arrested McBride for stalking Franklin that night, something Peterson warned McBride of during the interaction.
Now, stalking is one of the three charges that jurors must decide on, along with shooting into an occupied car and murder. McBride’s trial is before Judge Mary Ann O’Malley and is set to continue next week.
Witnesses will include Franklin’s two sons, now teenagers, who watched their mother’s ex-boyfriend kill her that day, Filkowski said.