OAKLAND (BCN) — One of the two men who were fatally shot outside a birthday party at an art gallery in downtown Oakland early Sunday morning graduated from Berkeley High School in 2014 and played on a youth rugby club and on the school’s football team, one of his coaches said Monday.
Oakland police identified the two men as 20-year-old Craig Fletcher-Cooks and 22-year-old Terrence McCrary and said they both lived in Oakland.
Keir Paasch, the head coach for the Berkeley Rhinos Rugby Club, said Fletcher-Cooks was “a leader” when he played for the club team, which he said is affiliated with Berkeley High School but not directly connected to the school.
Police said officers who responded at 12:53 a.m. on Sunday to reports of gunfire in the 300 block of 15th Street between Harrison and Webster streets found Fletcher-Cooks and McCrary suffering from multiple
gunshot wounds.
Paramedics responded to the scene but the two men were pronounced dead shortly after they arrived.
Officers found a third gunshot victim several blocks from the crime scene and he was taken to a hospital, where he is in stable condition, police said.
The shooting occurred outside a birthday party at the Prime Development art gallery at 322 15th St.
Police haven’t released any information about suspects or a motive in the shooting.
Paasch said Fletcher-Cooks, who he knew as Craig Fletcher, was “a good kid” who would regularly come out to Rhinos practices to check on the team after he graduated.
Paasch said Fletcher-Cooks was “very athletic” and played with “good energy.”
Paasch noted that the Rhinos also lost 17-year-old Efejon Ustenci in a drowning accident at Long Lake in Placer County on June 22, only five days after Ustenci graduated from Berkeley High School.
“We’ve had kind of a rough summer. It’s been a rough off-season,” he said.