OAKLAND — The revolver that was used to kill 34-year-old Dexter Appleby on an Emeryville street was seized by police six months after the May 2023 homicide, but investigators didn’t realize it for nearly two years, according to court records.
Oakland police found the gun — a silver Colt revolver — while raiding the Ney Avenue home of 44-year-old James Wheeler while investigating the Nov. 21, 2023 shooting death of Johnny James Johnson Jr. Wheeler, then a UPS driver, was arrested, charged and eventually convicted of manslaughter in Johnson’s killing, after his lawyer argued self-defense at trial.
But all the while, the revolver sat in an Oakland Police Department locker, without police in Emeryville or Oakland aware of its potential link to Appleby’s killing. It wasn’t until June 2025, a month before Wheeler’s manslaughter conviction, that one of his family members called police and implicated him in Appleby’s shooting that police tested the gun, according to testimony.
A ballistics technician linked it to bullets found at Appleby’s death, court records show.
Wheeler now faces a murder charge in Appleby’s killing. At his preliminary hearing last month, police revealed the shocking break in the case: Wheeler’s own mother reached out to police and identified him as Appleby’s killer. But the defense said she had strong “bias” and a motive to lie about her son, due to a serious conflict within their family.
Appleby allegedly had enemies, something that was readily apparent to police after someone fatally shot him about 20 minutes before midnight on May 26, 2023, on 41st Street and San Pablo Avenue in Emeryville. A detective almost instantly recognized Appleby from prior contacts, then as police were taping off the crime scene, a man walked up, according to records.
“Somebody was going to kill his (expletive),” the man allegedly told police, adding, “I was going to tell my brother to kill his (expletive).”
Emeryville police Sgt. Edward Mayorga, who overheard the remark, conceded on cross-examination he made no attempt to figure out who the man’s brother was. One of Appleby’s relatives later told authorities he believed that the killing was over infighting in an Oakland gang that Appleby had joined. Police also identified a suspect, drafted a murder warrant for that person, but later found out through phone records he was at a gas station at the time, authorities said.
At the hearing’s end, Wheeler’s lawyer argued the positive identification was tainted by “bias” and that the firearm had plenty of time to change hands before it ended up in Wheeler’s house. But Judge Clifford Blakely upheld the murder charge, ruling that cumulatively there was enough to meet the low legal bar of probable cause.
“Even taking into account the bias and other discrepancies that you’ve pointed out, I think the fact that the gun involved in the shooting here was found in the Ney residence, and closely associated with your client, provides some corroboration of that identification,” Blakely said to Wheeler’s lawyer.
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