DA Blames Price for Release of Man Now Accused of Killing Oakland Parole Officer

Updated 2:24 p.m. Tuesday

Alameda County’s district attorney is blaming her predecessor for policies that she said led to the February release of a man now charged with killing a state parole agent in Oakland last week.

Bryan Keith Hall, who was arrested in the fatal shooting of agent Joshua Lemont Byrd at the Division of Adult Parole Operations office in East Oakland on Thursday, faces a first-degree murder charge in the killing.

Hall had been on parole in Oakland since early this year after pleading no contest to assault with a deadly weapon for a random stabbing near Lake Merritt in 2022. As part of a plea deal, other charges associated with the attack, including an attempted murder charge and multiple enhancements for repeat offenses, were dropped.

District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson said Monday that a special directive put in place by her predecessor, Pamela Price — a progressive prosecutor who was recalled last November — prevented the office from considering charge enhancements in Hall’s plea negotiations, including one for great bodily harm and another for his previous felony convictions.

“They could not use those strikes as it relates to any plea bargaining without permission from the prior administration,” she told reporters ahead of Hall’s arraignment. “There was a plea taken in January of 2025 while that directive was still in place, and sentencing occurred on February 7, 2025, again, while that directive was still in place.”

The directive, which aimed to decrease prison sentences in favor of alternatives to incarceration, was one of Price’s first major policy shifts after taking office in 2023. The policy said that in most instances, “prosecutors shall not file or require defendants to plead to sentence enhancements or other sentencing allegations.”

“My first order of business when I came to this office was to get rid of that directive,” Jones Dickson said. She did so the day after her inauguration.

In a statement issued earlier Monday, Price said the plea was negotiated under the administration of Jones Dickson, who was sworn in on Feb. 18, and called the blame placed on her administration “disinformation.”

“Mr. Hall’s crime took place before I was in the office and his negotiated plea deal was made after I left office,” she wrote.

According to Price, the plea decision was made by an attorney in Jones Dickson’s office.

Hall was paroled immediately after his sentencing, nearly two weeks before Jones Dickson took office, because he had completed the maximum sentence for the crime in county jail, awaiting his conviction, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

During an evidentiary hearing in the stabbing case in November, Hall’s public defender told the court they believed his attack against that victim was likely “driven by some sort of mental health issues” based on testimony about his behavior.

After initially refusing to appear for his Monday morning arraignment in the shooting case, Hall appeared for a rescheduled arraignment at 2 p.m. but declined to enter a plea. He is currently being held at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin without bail. His arraignment is now set for Aug. 22.

According to charging documents, the shooting occurred after Hall entered the parole office around 12:40 p.m. Thursday and was told to leave because his parole officer was not there. He had missed a scheduled meeting there with his officer the previous day.

Around 12:50 p.m., Byrd was shot. Minutes later, a witness saw Hall leaving the building with a firearm, the charging documents allege. Video footage shows Hall running outside the building before boarding an Alameda County transit bus. He is believed to have committed a robbery on the bus.

Oakland Police Department officers found Hall and arrested him hours later near 90th Avenue and International Boulevard, about two miles from the parole office. In a nearby dumpster, they found a firearm and an orange safety jacket that they said Hall was seen stripping off as he fled, according to doorbell camera footage.

Byrd, 40, died of his injuries after being immediately transferred to a hospital, marking the first line-of-duty death of an officer in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation since 2018.

It’s unclear how Hall was able to bring a firearm into the office, which serves as a common meeting space for parolees and their officers.

CDCR declined KQED’s request for comment on its security protocols at the site, citing safety concerns.

Including the 2022 stabbing, Hall has 10 prior felony convictions in California dating back to 1996. They include assault, second-degree robbery, evading police and illegally possessing a firearm as a felon.

In 2015, he was convicted of illegally taking a vehicle in Contra Costa County. Court records show that while paroled following that conviction, he had his release revoked twice because of parole violations, first in November 2015 and again in April the following year.

CDCR said Byrd was not Hall’s parole officer. It’s unclear if they had a relationship.

Byrd had only joined the Oakland office in October, after 10 years in other roles within CDCR, including as a correctional officer and sergeant.

In a statement Thursday, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, acting as governor while Newsom was out of the state, commended Byrd’s “integrity and courage.”

“This is a heartbreaking loss,” they wrote. “We are keeping his family in our prayers and we join the men and women of CDCR in mourning this tragedy.”

KQED’s Matthew Green contributed to this report.