Pinole Woman Says She's Confident About Her ID Of Berkeley Murder Suspects

A Pinole woman testified today that she’s confident about her identification of the man who allegedly killed her fiancé and wounded her in a shooting in Berkeley in December.

In her second day on the witness stand in the preliminary hearing for three men who are charged with murder and other charges in the Dec. 29 shooting, Rebekah Cleberg, 29, said that counseling she has undergone has “lifted the memory blocks I’d placed to protect myself and my memory is more vivid now” than it was in the days after the incident.

Cleberg said, “I was blocking out a lot of memories because it was so horrible” but she now clearly remembers the smell of gunpowder and the face of the shooter, who she said was 18-year-old Khalil Phanor of San Leandro.

In addition to murder, Phanor and co-defendants Carl Young, 20, of San Leandro, and Gregory Foote, 19, of Hayward, are charged with robbery, assault with a firearm and the special circumstance of committing a murder during the course of a robbery, which carries a potential penalty of death or life in prison without parole.

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Cleberg and her fiancé, Kamahl Middleton, 36, were shot in a parking lot near San Pablo and University avenues at about 9:45 p.m. on Dec. 29. Cleberg said she and Middleton had a license to grow medical marijuana at their residence in Pinole and agreed to sell marijuana to a man who responded to an ad they had placed on Craigslist about selling to qualified medical marijuana patients.

Advised by a lawyer who sat next to her during her testimony, Cleberg at first said, “It was on the fence” whether the planned sale was lawful. But she quickly amended her answer to say that she and Middleton thought the sale was legal because the prospective buyer had a valid photo identity card and medical marijuana prescription and they were technically asking him to make a donation to medical marijuana patients.

The buyer agreed to pay $3,200 to buy one and a half pounds of a strain of medical marijuana called “Girl Scout Cookies,” Cleberg said.

Berkeley was chosen as the place to consummate the deal because it was halfway between the Pinole residence where she and Middleton lived and the buyer’s home in San Leandro, Cleberg said.

She and Middleton only expected to meet with the buyer and his girlfriend and were surprised when the buyer showed up with three other males, she said. Cleberg said they felt reassured when a man whose face matched the photo ID of the prospective buyer approached their car.

But she said the man, who she identified as Young, then asked to look at some of the marijuana and later tried to take a bag of marijuana.

Cleberg said she and Middleton struggled with Young and then a man she identified as Phanor stuck his head into their car, said, “This is a stickup” and fired a single shot that struck Middleton and her.

Phanor’s attorney, Stephen Avilla, and Young’s attorney, David Cohen, both cross-examined Cleberg at length today about her identification of their clients but Cleberg insisted that her identification is correct.

Cleberg said of Phanor, “The first time I looked at him (in court on Wednesday) I realized it was him because of his eyes, his nose and his cheek structure.”

When Avilla said that Cleberg hasn’t been consistent in describing the shooter in various interviews with police and in her court testimony, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Thomas Reardon warned the attorney that he was being “argumentative” and said he should move on to another subject.

Reardon also became upset at Cohen when the defense lawyer said the judge was taking too long to rule about whether a question he wanted to ask of Cleberg was legally proper and admissible.

Reardon told Cohen, “Never say anything like that to me again. I’ll take as long as I want so don’t suggest to me that I’m taking too long.”

Foote is charged in the incident because prosecutors think he was the driver of the suspects’ car.

A 17-year-old suspect was also arrested in connection with the shooting but he’s being prosecuted separately in juvenile court.

The preliminary hearing, which will determine if there’s enough evidence for the three men to be ordered to stand trial on the charges against them, will resume on Monday.

--Bay City News/Shutterstock image