A convicted robber with multiple gun crimes walked free on bail after allegedly ramming a police cruiser — then drove through Oakland and gunned down a 23-year-old man working on a car. Jamazea Kittell, 33, now faces 50 years to life after an Alameda County jury convicted him of first-degree murder with drive-by shooting and firearm enhancements. The victim, Perez Kalief-Chambers, never got the second chance the courts gave his killer.
This is the body count of a system that treats repeat violent offenders as if they're just misunderstood. Kittell was already a two-time robbery convict in Alameda County and had a gun possession conviction in Contra Costa County — making it a felony for him to touch a firearm. He was facing charges for assaulting Vallejo Police Officer Brad Kim by ramming Kim's cruiser on June 27, 2023. Kim shot Kittell in the face; Kittell survived. But Solano County prosecutors couldn't convince Judge Robert Bowers that ramming a police vehicle constituted attempted murder. On October 10, 2023, Bowers reduced the charges to assault. Kittell bailed out the very next day, according to court records.
Twenty-one months later, Kittell pulled up to the 9400 block of C Street in Oakland and opened fire on two men working on a car. Kalief-Chambers was killed. The second victim survived only because he was tucked underneath the vehicle. The murder weapon hasn't been recovered, but prosecutors linked Kittell through surveillance footage of him running errands in the same Acura used in the shooting, the Mercury News reported. When arrested in San Bernardino County, Kittell had firearms in his possession — none the murder weapon, but illegal for a felon. His defense argued the vehicle evidence wasn't enough. The jury disagreed.
Kittell's Solano County assault case remains pending. Judge Bowers has not publicly addressed the consequences of his ruling.
This isn't isolated. In Washington state, Derrick Stell Jr., 29, was already wanted on a felony escape warrant from the Department of Corrections — stemming from prior drive-by shooting and first-degree robbery convictions — when he allegedly chased down and executed 31-year-old Abraham Logan outside a Des Moines bar on September 20. Logan, an unarmed father of two and youth football coach, was celebrating birthdays with family when he tried to verbally intervene in an assault, The Post Millennial reported. Surveillance footage captured Stell and his uncle Keenan Stell, 42, pursuing Logan before Derrick Stell fired as Logan fell to the ground. Seventeen 9mm casings were recovered. When US Marshals caught Stell in Burien on October 13, he was carrying a gun and drugs — and told officers he'd planned to kill a cop and provoke a "suicide by cop" shooting, according to the US Marshals Service. Stell's record includes two first-degree robbery convictions, a 2013 second-degree assault conviction, and a 2017 drive-by shooting conviction.
Two dead Americans. Two repeat violent offenders who should never have been free. Judge Bowers reduced a charge and released a man who went on to murder. Washington's corrections system had a violent escapee walking the streets long enough to gun down a youth football coach. The ideology is the same: treat the criminal as the victim, treat the public as acceptable collateral damage.
The question isn't whether these men deserved compassion. It's why the system gave more compassion to them than to the people they killed.
