OAKLAND — Family members of the homicide victim say that police told them Antoine “Fuzzy” Ford was a man of courage that day.
A 40-year-old alleged West Oakland gang member with a lengthy criminal record, Ford had just witnessed his best friend being shot and mortally wounded, and he reacted reflexively. He fired his own handgun at the attacker, then sped his dying friend to a nearby hospital, where doctors were unable to save him. The victim’s aunt said police later showed her a picture of “Fuzzy” and she asked Oakland police Detective Bradley Baker if he was in trouble.
“Detective Baker said, ‘no, he’s a hero,’ adding that without Fuzzy’s actions, the case may have never been solved,” the woman recounted in a letter later published in court. “He told me Fuzzy would not go to jail for this.”
But federal prosecutors had other ideas. Ford may have saved his own life that day, and come close to saving his friend’s, but his multiple felony convictions made it illegal for him to have a gun in his possession. The U.S. Department of Justice charged Ford with being a felon in possession of a firearm, only the latest time in Ford’s life that an Oakland shooting led to a federal gun charge.
The Sept. 24, 2022 shooting has been placed under a microscope in both federal and state court. In Alameda County, prosecutors charged the alleged shooter, 26-year-old Bomani Bassette-Hairston, with murder. They allege that both Ford and the homicide victim, 36-year-old Charles Wright, were selling drugs on the 900 block of Brockhurst Street that day when Bassette-Hairston decided to rob them.
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“What happened was, Bomani Bassette-Hairston went to rob a drug dealer, left his car running nearby, turned the corner, shot Charles Wright, causing his death (and) didn’t count on Antoine Ford being there,” Deputy District Attorney Greg Dolge said at a Bassette-Hairston’s preliminary hearing earlier this year. “And that’s where we are today.”
Charges against Bassette-Hairston are still pending, but police say it was easy to identify him as the suspect for one main reason: Ford’s gunhand had been accurate that day. Bassette-Hairston, a former San Jose State University football player, was struck by gunfire and wounded, got a ride to the hospital and was arrested on suspicion of murder after undergoing surgery, according to court records.
Baker testified at the preliminary hearing that day, but didn’t refer to Ford as a hero. He said both Ford and Wright were known members of the Ghost Town gang, a group that has existed in West Oakland for decades, and that an autopsy revealed Wright had a “variety of drugs in his system” when he was killed.
Bassette-Hairston’s lawyer argued that his client acted in self defense.
Ford was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm months after the homicide, but he wasn’t jailed until 2023, when he was once against arrested for alleged possession of a pistol in Oakland. After the second arrest, he agreed to plead guilty to a gun charge, giving him a total of seven felony convictions throughout his life, including four related to the possession of firearms, court records show.
One of those gun cases made headlines. In 2008, Ford was shot by then-Oakland police Officer Aaron Smith, now a lieutenant, after allegedly brandishing a gun at the officer. Smith wrote in a report that he ordered Ford several times to show him his hands, then fired at him as Ford appeared to be pulling the gun from the wheel well of a vehicle. Ford was hospitalized and later charged in federal court with gun possession, resulting in a prison term, records show.
It was one of 14 separate occasions that Ford has been shot, according to court papers. The first occurred when he was just 14 years old, and nearly claimed his life, he recalled in a letter to the court filed last July.
“I was told I almost died and had to be brought back to life,” Ford wrote. “After I was shot the first time, everything changed. I was no longer looked at as a kid anymore. That’s when I drop (sic) out of school, took to the streets full time because this was my new family.”
His upbringing didn’t offer much hope, Ford wrote.
“My dad was absent, and my mom was on drugs and a prostitute … My granny took care of me but she too was on drugs,” he wrote. “I learned from older guys in my area and watched what they were doing.”
The first time he saw a friend get killed, he said, he was 12 years old. On the day Wright was shot in 2022, Ford said he was eager to show his best friend a Lexus, but was also exhausted from “staying up all night partying” after attending a funeral for another friend shot dead right in front of him.
Prosecutors argued for a 46-month prison term for Ford, writing in court filings that a significant prison term would help “deter other offenders and protect the community” from people who shoot guns in the area where Wright was killed.
“The vicinity of the Brockhurst shooting in Oakland is a community that has endured an excess of gun-related violence for too long,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Lee wrote in a sentencing memo.
The defense argued for 30 months, writing that Ford had stayed out of trouble for years before this case and that he has severe trauma from his lifetime residing in West Oakland.
In his letter, Ford said he knows “it’s not right” to carry a gun, but also attempted to justify it, saying that after being shot 14 times, “I trusted no one.”
“I really feel (and) know in my heart that if I didn’t have a gun I would have been killed, gunned down too,” he wrote.
U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam sentenced Ford to 41 months in federal prison at a court hearing last month. He’s being housed in USP Victorville and has a scheduled release date in 2026, records show.