Vijay Bhushan participated in a revenge killing gone awry.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: South Asian American Vijay Bhushan, 22, was one of two men convicted Monday in the first-degree murder of a 15-year-old Oakland, California girl.
Prosecutor Glenn Kim said the only reason the girl was killed was because she was standing near a 14-year-old boy that Bhushan and 19-year-old Lilron Jones wanted dead.
According to Oakland’s local Fox affiliate, Kim told jurors in his closing argument last Thursday that Jones, Bhushan and a third suspect, 25-year-old Marquise Thompson, had “a plan of action,” which was to murder the 14-year-old boy because they thought he had killed their 15-year-old friend Hadari Askari five months prior.
According to KTVU, the prosecutor said Jones, Bhushan and Thompson were close to Hadari, who wanted to become an Oakland firefighter and was in a summer work program with the Oakland Fire Department but was fatally shot in the 6700 block of Leona Creek Drive at about 8 p.m. on July 10, 2012.
KTVU reported the victim Jubrille, her sister and several close girlfriends walked through the 69th Avenue Village on December 30, 2012, on their way to the Coliseum BART station to take a train to go to the Bayfair Center shopping mall in San Leandro.
The girls stopped to talk to a boy one of them knew. That boy was with the suspects’ intended target, as the word on the street was that he had killed Hadari, when they approached him and opened fire. The intended target survived the shooting, escaping with a leg wound, but Jubrille, who was in the wrong place in the wrong time, was hit in the head by one of the 20-strong barrage of bullets that were fired in her direction.
The prosecutor accused Jones and Thompson of acting as the shooters in the incident but said Bhushan is equally guilty because he gave Thompson the gun that was used and allegedly found at Bhushan’s house. Thompson will be prosecuted in a separate trial that is impending.
Bhushan’s lawyer, Ernie Castillo, told jurors that Bhushan should be found not guilty because he made a decision not to participate in the shooting after he noticed that the 14-year-old boy was near to Jubrille and the other girls as well as a baby and concluded that it was too dangerous to open fire.
Castillo admitted that Bhushan “made some bad choices earlier that day” when the three men began looking for their intended victim, and had gotten caught up “in the emotion of revenge,” but he ultimately decided he “didn’t want to go through with it.” The defense also claimed cell phone records indicated his client was not in fact at the scene of the shooting.
Castillo stated he was “disappointed” by the jury’s verdict because he thinks it held Bhushan “accountable” for the decisions and actions of other people.