UNION CITY — Jason Cornejo and Carlos Zepeda were accused of murdering two boys in a 2019 drive-by shooting outside of a local middle school, where both victims were sitting in a parked van.
In the end, the result for both defendants was the same: Cornejo, 22, and Zepeda, 23, each pleaded no contest to two counts of voluntary manslaughter for the killings of 11-year-old Kevin Hernandez and 14-year-old Sean Withington. On June 28, they’re set to be sentenced to 23 years in state prison, court records show.
The plea deal marks a partial end to one of the East Bay’s most heart-wrenching cases. A third defendant, Oswaldo Flores, who was younger than 18 at the time of the killings, is still facing murder charges and set to enter a plea on June 20, records show.
The killings were attributed to a violent rivalry between gangs in Hayward and Union City. Prosecutors have said all three suspects drove up in a rented Toyota and opened fire at the boys, who were sitting in Kevin’s mom’s stolen van outside Searles Elementary School at 1 a.m. on Nov. 23, 2019.
Cornejo and Zepeda initially faced sentences of life without the possibility of parole after charges were filed in 2020. They were set to go on trial in May, but instead accepted the plea deal on May 6.
None of the victims’ family members spoke at the change-of-plea hearing, but they will be given the opportunity to speak at the sentencing.
Cornejo and Zepeda had a lengthy preliminary hearing last year, where police testified about how they used mostly digital evidence to tie both men to the shocking crime. The evidence included bluetooth data from their phones found on the rented Toyota, as well as cellphone location data, and Instagram messages that helped establish their membership in a Hayward street gang.
The boys killed were associated with a rival gang in Union City, according to a Redwood City police investigator who used to work in the East Bay. He testified that Kevin was first listed as a possible gang associate at age 9, during a traffic stop of a car full of “members and associates” of the gang, according to a transcript of the preliminary hearing.
Alameda County Judge Amy Sekany ordered both men to stand trial, saying the evidence tying Zepeda to the Toyota was “irrefutable,” but added there “could be” problems for prosecutors at trial based on what she’d seen. Defense attorneys had argued that the evidence was circumstantial and inconclusive.