Sacramento homicides declined in 2023. But shootings, other violence still shook the region

Brittani Frierson said she was just following well-meaning parenting advice when she granted her 10-year-old son’s plea to play outside their Foothill Farms condominium complex during a relaxing Christmas vacation.

But a few minutes later, her son, Keith Jhay “KJ” Frierson lay bloodied near his bike gifted for Christmas as his mother screamed over his lifeless body.

“I don’t want people to step back and just allow my baby to be somebody that was, ‘Maybe in the wrong place at (the) wrong time,’” Frierson said. “He was in the right place. He was playing. He was in his yard, with his friends, riding a bike. This should not have happened.”

KJ was 2023’s last homicide in Sacramento County after he was shot in the neck, a gun allegedly fired by another 10-year-old boy, whose father was arrested and has pleaded not guilty to six charges related to the death.

Sacramento’s police chief credits to a recently implemented plan to reduce gun violence in the capital city. But even as the raw numbers fell, the four-county capital region still experienced a number of frightening homicides in 2023, capped by KJ’s heart-wrenching Dec. 30 death.

Davis, a close-knit college town, was gripped in fear for a week this spring as a massive manhunt took place in search of a suspect accused of brutally stabbing three people, killing two of them in seemingly random attacks in the cover of darkness at city parks. A former UC Davis student, whose mental competency to stand trial has come into question, was arrested in the stabbings.

In April, a busy Roseville park became the site of a shootout in which a suspect allegedly took two bystanders hostage while trying to evade police. One hostage was killed; his wife and a California Highway Patrol officer were wounded before authorities apprehended the suspect.

Each homicide leaves devastation in its wake.

“In a million years, I never would have thought that myself or Brittani (Frierson) would ever have to explain gun violence to these kids,” April Lewis, whose child was KJ’s close friend, told The Sacramento Bee earlier this month.

Steep decline in homicides in capital city. What changed?

The city of Sacramento had a significant decline in the number of homicides, dropping to 38 in 2023 from 54 in 2022, 58 in 2021 and 43 in 2020, as the overall violent crime rate headed in a much more positive direction.

In October, Sacramento Police Chief Kathy Lester announced the city had an 18% drop in the overall number of violent crimes in first nine months of 2023. From January through September, the city has recorded 40% fewer rape cases, a 21% decline in aggravated assaults and a 6.1% drop in robberies, all in comparison to the first nine months of 2022.

The declining trend in violent crime in the city continued through the end of the year, according to 2023 statistics provided by Sacramento police in response to a California Public Records Act request submitted by The Bee.

Reported rapes in Sacramento, which had climbed from 102 in 2018 to 159 in 2021 and 184 in 2022, dropped to 130 in 2023.

Aggravated assaults, which were up from 2,139 in 2018 to 2,893 in 2021 and climbed even further to 3,196 in 2022, dipped to 2,513 last year.

Sacramento had 1,052 robberies in 2018, a figure that dropped in the following two years but then rose to 1,245 in 2022, reached 1,202 in 2023.

Lester became Sacramento’s new police chief in January 2022, as homicides were on an upward trend, from 36 in 2018 to 58 in 2021, according to Police Department statistics.

The number of homicides in 2021 was the most the city had seen since 2006. Even in 2022, a year in which Sacramento saw a slight drop in homicides, the mass shooting that killed six people and wounded 12 others at 10th and K streets in downtown Sacramento shocked residents and increased the urgency to find ways to stop the violence.

Lester and her department had already been developing a strategy to reduce gun violence, a plan driven by intelligence gathering while working closely with community groups targeting root causes of crime, such as poverty and drug and alcohol abuse, with intervention and prevention services.

Sacramento also had a continued decline in reported shootings in the first nine months last year: 135, compared to 137 during the same period in 2022 and 188 in 2021. That represented a 28% drop in shootings in the past two years, according to the department.

“Everyone is affected by gun violence, whether you’re affected directly or whether it happens in your community,” Lester said at a news conference in late October. “And that’s something that we need to change collectively as a society.”

Deaths drop slightly in sheriff’s jurisdiction. ‘It’s insane out there’

Throughout Sacramento County, the number of homicide deaths dropped to 87 people in 2023, a significant decrease from 110 in 2022, 113 in 2021 and 123 in 2020, according to the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office.

In the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office’s jurisdiction, there was a slight drop to 38 homicides in 2023 after 39 in 2022, 38 in 2021 and 49 in 2020.

“I’m still concerned about the violence amongst our youth,” Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper said during a late December interview with The Bee. “There’s just a proliferation of guns, it’s insane out there. Everybody’s carrying guns, and they don’t care.”

The sheriff said the homicide rate is a factor on how safe residents should feel, in part because those types of violent crimes dominate headlines and sometimes desensitize the public. Cooper said people are “just more violent” these days, such as “hotheads” prone to respond with violence.

“It doesn’t take much to trigger someone to go off to shoot you or stab you. So, you gotta be very careful out there and not agitate anybody,” Cooper said. “People have these hair-triggers that will just go off in a heartbeat, and that’s troublesome.”

An argument over child custody arrangements, for instance, reportedly led to a deadly shooting last month in North Highlands. Adam Joseph Williams and his girlfriend were arguing with her ex-boyfriend, Jarrell Edward Triplett, sheriff’s officials said; Triplett allegedly shot Williams during the argument and fled the scene. Williams died at a hospital. Homicide detectives arrested Triplett the following day.

Homicides in Citrus Heights, Rancho Cordova and Elk Grove

One suburban Sacramento County police department an increase in homicides in 2023: Citrus Heights had five homicides last year, up from four in 2022, three in 2021 and two in 2020.

Two deadly shootings last year occurred months apart in the 7800 block of Sayonara Drive in Citrus Heights.

Rancho Cordova, a city that contracts police services with the Sheriff’s Office, had four homicides in 2023, which is the same number of killings in the previous year. One of last year’s homicide victims was an 18-year-old woman stabbed Feb. 1 at a Rancho Cordova home. A few hours later, the man suspected of killing her led authorities in a vehicle chase from Solano County to Elk Grove, where three officers shot and wounded him as they took him into custody.

Elk Grove’s homicide rate has been on a decline: it had four in 2022 but reported only one homicide in 2023. Detectives arrested an Elk Grove man accused of secretly putting fentanyl in his wife’s food before the woman died in January from being poisoned with the synthetic opioid.

Homicides that shocked Roseville and Yolo County

The Placer County Sheriff’s Office had a significant drop to two homicides in 2023, after a big jump from one homicide in 2021 to eight in 2022, including the deaths of Kathy Lynch, a California lobbyist, and her boyfriend, Gerald Upholt.

The Roseville Police Department handled three homicides in 2023, including the death of James MacEgan. The Roseville man and his wife were taken hostage in April at Mahany Park after CHP officers tried to take Eric James Abril into custody.

Abril gained more notoriety three months later, when he reportedly escaped from a Roseville hospital while being guarded by a Placer County sheriff’s deputy. Abril was captured after a 33-hour manhunt. He remains in custody now faces two additional attempted murder charges in the April park shootout for allegedly shooting at two more law enforcement officers than had previously been reported.

The Woodland Police Department had three homicides, up from one homicide in 2022, said Lt. Victoria Danzl, spokeswoman for the office.

Violence broke out at a popular Woodland shopping complex Dec. 3, killing 36-year-old Isaias Jaime. Homicide suspect David Manuel Sanchez-Gallardo, 33, had a dispute with the Jaime. Sanchez-Gallardo is accused of colliding into Jaime with his car in the 100 block of West Main Street and shooting him during the Dec. 3 incident, police said.

The Davis Police Department had two homicides in 2023: the deaths of David Breaux, 50, and UC Davis student Karim Abou Najm, 20, who were killed in separate Davis city parks days apart. They, along with surviving victim Kimberlee Guillory, were attacked in the shocking stabbing spree last year in Davis.

Carlos Reales Dominguez, the arrested 22-year-old former UC Davis student, remains in custody facing criminal charges in the Davis stabbings. His Yolo Superior Court case was reinstated earlier this month after his mental competency was restored at a state hospital.

Lt. Dan Beckwith, a Davis police spokesman, said the stabbings would’ve been shocking and unusual for any city, especially Davis. The college town reported only one homicide in the previous three years.

“People were afraid, they didn’t know what was happening,” Beckwith said. “Folks are relieved that it’s over now.”