Girlfriend provides alibi for Oakland murder defendant

The girlfriend of an ex-convict who’s accused of fatally shooting another man in Oakland two years ago because of a dispute over a van testified Thursday that he couldn’t have committed the crime because he was with her at the time.

Taking the witness stand in the trial of Patrick Dempsey, 41, for the killing of 27-year-old Spencer Reboredo in the 900 block of 35th Street, near a Chevron gas station, at about 4:15 a.m. on July 14, 2016, Sabrina Cross said:

“I just know that the night the murder happened he was with me.”

When Alameda County prosecutor Butch Ford cross-examined Cross he alleged that her statements to investigators about being with Dempsey at the time of the crime haven’t been consistent and that in one of her statements she indicated that she was apart from Dempsey for a period around the time of the fatal shooting.

But Cross said:

“From the time of Patrick’s first court date I told the court, “I know he didn’t do it because he was with me that night.”

Ford told jurors in his opening statement in the trial that Dempesy and Reboredo knew each other because they both lived at a warehouse in Oakland which hosted dance parties to raise money and there was illegal activity such as methamphetamine drug dealing.

Ford said Dempsey shot and killed Reboredo as Reboredo fled from him and the motive was that Reboredo had borrowed a van from Dempsey and had refused to return it.

But Dempsey’s lawyer Megan Burns said Dempsey is innocent and there’s evidence that a Union City man who harmed Reboredo several months before the shooting was the person who killed Reboredo.

Burns wrote in a court filing before Dempsey’s trial began that an informant told police that she heard the Union City man “bragging about having killed Spencer (Reboredo) due to an outstanding debt of an unknown amount of money.”

Ford and Burns tentatively are scheduled to present their closing argument’s in Dempsey’s case on Tuesday.

Dempsey allegedly has three prior felony convictions for vehicle theft, driving under the influence of alcohol and petty theft with priors.