SLO County DA drops charges against man accused of mass shooting at the Oceano Dunes
The San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office has dropped its case against an Oakland man accused of a mass shooting at the Oceano Dunes in May 2019 that sent six people to the hospital.
On Wednesday, Deputy District Attorney Julie Antos presented an oral motion to Superior Court Judge Jacquelyn Duffy to dismiss all charges against Francisco Orozco due to insufficient evidence. Duffy granted the motion, exonerated Orozco’s bail, and ordered that he no longer needs to wear a GPS monitor.
Orozco had spent four months in custody at the County Jail with bail initially set at $1 million before he was released on $500,000 bail posted by his family in late August 2019, according to his attorney, Carrie Winters.
Winters said following the hearing that justice was finally served in the case, despite the allegations against Orozco making national news, and his loss of months of his life and a significant amount of money.
“Each of us should demand that our police agencies do better, so that people such as Francisco Orozco are never again dragged through the nightmare of being an innocent citizen standing accused of a crime,” Winters said, calling the Sheriff’s Office’s investigation into the shooting “inadequate.”
The DA’s Office put out a news release immediately following the hearing explaining that DNA evidence and an uncooperative witness — the only one to identify Orozco as the shooter — “created significant doubt that it can be proven that Orozco was a shooter.”
Witness testimony presented in court over two days last year described a chaotic scene at the unpermitted May 4, 2019, concert as shots rang out and concertgoers initially thought there was more than one shooter.
During their testimony, sheriff’s deputies and State Parks rangers also described conflicting witness statements, and Orozco’s former attorney previously told The Tribune his client was misidentified by a single witness and wasn’t involved in the shooting.
Duffy said following the hearing there were “certainly discrepancies” in witness statements to investigators, but one witness’ identification of Orozco did establish probable cause to proceed the case toward trial.
DNA results were not yet available at the time of the preliminary hearing.
Orozco, 20, had pleaded not guilty to one count of attempted murder for a victim he allegedly targeted, as well as to five counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm for each of the concertgoers he was accused of shooting. The charges also carried sentencing enhancements that could have sent Orozco to prison for life if convicted on all charges and enhancements.
His former attorney, Guy Galambos, had said that Orozco was a union roofer in Oakland and had no previous criminal history prior to his arrest at the Oceano Dunes Vehicular Recreational Area. Galambos said that the one witness to positively identify Orozco as the shooter initially identified someone else.
But investigators narrowed their focus to Orozco — who was detained and later arrested the morning after the shooting when he was seen emerging from an area already closed off by officers — after a handgun matching shell cases found at the scene was discovered during a search at Orozco’s friend’s house in Oakland, and a corresponding gun case was found in another friend’s truck.
Orozco had technical difficulties during Wednesday’s hearing, but Winters told Duffy that he thanks the District Attorney for “doing the right thing,” so that he may be able to get on with his life and care for his young daughter.
Antos thanked the defense for waiving statutory time requirements in the case so that the DA’s Office could further evaluate the evidence.
Following the hearing, Winters said her client, who appeared at Wednesday’s hearing via Zoom conference, said he is thankful for the work of Galambos, who conducted critical early investigation into the shooting, as well to the District Attorney’s Office for dismissing the case.
“A majority of us are never going to know what it is like to be falsely accused of a crime. But we shouldn’t be apathetic to those who are, because it can and does happen. It happened to Francisco Orozco,” Winters said. “The past year and a half have been a nightmare for Francisco Orozco, starting with an inadequate investigation by the San Luis Obispo Sheriff’s Department.”
She noted that Orozco was arrested and charged despite not fitting the physical description of the shooter given by multiple eyewitnesses, and DNA and other analysis conducted on physical evidence obtained at the scene did not match.
“He spent months in jail and was released on bail only after he and his family paid tens of thousands of dollars to secure his release. He will never be able to recoup the time spent in jail, nor will he see that money again,” she said. “The amount of stress that Mr. Orozco has been living with since that night has almost been unbearable, and it has been nice to see his spirits lifted by the news that the DA is dismissing the case.”
In their news release, the District Attorney’s Office said the dismissal came “following additional investigation, forensic testing, and the key witness becoming uncooperative.”
“Two firearms believed to have been used in the shooting, were subject to DNA testing. The results of that testing excluded Orozco as a match to DNA contained on both guns,” the news release said. “Additionally, the witness who had identified Orozco as a potential shooter has refused to cooperate in the prosecution which means that he would not testify at trial.”
“The District Attorney’s Office reviews all cases submitted for filing in light of our ethical duty to first seek the truth and to pursue only those cases which can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt,” District Attorney Dan Dow wrote in the release, adding that prosecutors have an “obligation to forego prosecution” if new evidence creates that doubt.
The agency stopped short of saying that evidence showed Orozco was not involved in the shooting.
“Throughout any prosecution, the District Attorney’s Office continues to evaluate the developing evidence and proof in the case,” the news release reads. “Although infrequent, there are cases which require dismissal because they no longer can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.”
A Sheriff’s Office spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on the defense’s criticism of the agency’s investigation. The Tribune was instead contacted by Assistant District Attorney Eric Dobroth with a statement in the the Sheriff’s Office’s defense.
Dobroth said the Sheriff’s Office conducted “a remarkable investigation in this matter,” which included “securing a chaotic post-shooting crime scene after midnight in a relatively remote area of the Oceano Dunes with hundreds of potential witnesses.”
Dobroth said the additional forensic testing and the key witness’ refusal to testify were “circumstances over which the Sheriff’s Office had no control.”
This article has been updated to include comments by the District Attorney’s Office and the Sheriff’s Office.
This story was originally published September 16, 2020 at 10:13 AM with the headline "SLO County DA drops charges against man accused of mass shooting at the Oceano Dunes."
