STOCKTON, California — A San Joaquin County jury on Wednesday, October 28, 2026, found Wesley Brownlee competent to stand trial, clearing the way for the long-delayed murder case over the 2021–2022 Stockton serial killings to proceed toward trial, San Joaquin County District Attorney Ron Freitas announced. The jury's finding means Brownlee will face six counts of first-degree murder, one count of attempted murder and related special-circumstances allegations. The verdict decides only whether Brownlee is mentally competent to be tried; it does not decide whether he committed the shootings, of which he is presumed innocent unless convicted.

Source: San Joaquin County District Attorney's Office, October 28, 2026

The verdict follows the hearing Awaaz Punjab reported on October 23, when, after six weeks of testimony, the competency case went to the jury and deliberations began on Thursday, October 22. Read the earlier report: the competency case goes to the jury

"This verdict confirms what the evidence has shown all along: Wesley Brownlee is competent to stand trial," Freitas said. "After years of delay, the victims' families and this community deserve their day in court. We are ready to proceed and will continue to fight for justice for the victims and the survivor, Natasha LaTour. These were horrific crimes that terrorized our community, and we will not rest until justice is served." The prosecution in the competency phase was led by Deputy District Attorney Elton Grau, with support from paralegal Michelle Vargas, and the district attorney's office thanked Stockton Police Chief Stanley McFadden and the Stockton Police Department for their investigation, the announcement said.

What the jury had to decide

Under California law, as the Stockton Record and USA Today explained during the hearing, a defendant is competent to stand trial if he understands the nature of the criminal proceedings, understands his own role in them, and can rationally assist his lawyers in preparing a defence; the jury's verdict had to be unanimous. Brownlee's defence, through attorney Allison Nobert, argued that the evidence showed a clear decline in his ability to communicate and engage, and that an untreated mental disorder prevented him from meaningfully assisting counsel — a doubt his own legal team first formally raised in 2024. Prosecutors answered that the question is Brownlee's present ability, not his past history: Deputy District Attorney Elton Grau pointed to jail video, recorded phone calls and conversations with family members, and argued Brownlee can communicate coherently when he chooses and is refusing to cooperate rather than unable to. The jury's verdict accepted that he is competent; the defence position remains part of the record of the hearing.

The case behind the hearing: the 2021–2022 shootings

The charges grow out of a series of shootings in Stockton and Oakland between April 2021 and September 2022 that police linked by ballistic tests and that terrified California's Central Valley. The Associated Press reported at the time of his arrest that the men killed in Stockton in 2022 were Paul Yaw, 35, on July 8; Salvador Debudey Jr., 43, on August 11; Jonathan Rodriguez Hernandez, 21, on August 30; Juan Cruz, 52, on September 21; and Lawrence Lopez Sr., 54, on September 27 — and that Juan Vasquez Serrano, 39, had been killed in Oakland on April 10, 2021. Natasha LaTour, 46, was shot in Stockton on April 16, 2021, and survived; the district attorney named her again on Wednesday as the survivor for whom his office is fighting. Brownlee, then 43, was arrested on October 15, 2022, after a surveillance team followed him driving through Stockton in the early hours; police said at the time that he was armed, dressed in dark clothing, and appeared to be "out hunting" for another victim. Motive has never been publicly established, and investigators have not identified a personal connection between Brownlee and the people shot.

Stockton is a Central Valley city of roughly 320,000 people, a trucking and warehouse crossroads on Interstate 5 and Highway 99, and home to one of the oldest and largest Punjabi communities in the United States. The 2022 shootings — most of them late at night, most of the victims alone outdoors — emptied streets, filled tip lines and left families waiting through more than two further years of legal delay while competency was litigated, first after the defence raised its doubt in 2024 and then through six weeks of expert and witness testimony this autumn. For those families, Wednesday's verdict is the first firm step toward the trial itself since the 2022 arrest. Brownlee remains in custody in San Joaquin County, and the allegations against him — six murders and one attempted murder — remain exactly that until a trial jury decides them: allegations he is presumed innocent of in law.