Pleasanton man facing murder charges in Oakland shooting

OAKLAND — A Pleasanton man has been arrested and charged with murder in connection with a May 2021 Oakland shooting, court records show.

Steven Eubanks, 30, was charged last year with murdering 50-year-old Dwight Burton. Police say he was linked to a Lexus that surveillance video showed the shooter was driving.

Burton was shot and killed about 12:03 p.m. May 26, 2021 on the 3200 block of 35th Avenue in Oakland. Eubanks was arrested four months later, but the arrest had not been previously reported in the media. Eubanks has been in jail on a no-bail hold ever since, and is due in court next month for a preliminary hearing.

A police probable-cause statement says that a witness to the shooting wrote down the license plate number of a Lexus that pulled up to where Burton was standing, just before someone inside opened fire. The car was picked up on license plate readers in Dublin before the homicide and in Pleasanton afterwards, police said.

The car was located June 30, in Tracy, where it had been abandoned. Cryptic statements filed in court by an Oakland police investigator say the investigation “revealed an association” between the car and Eubanks and that when the Lexus was recovered, police found Eubanks had a “biological connection” to the vehicle.

The probable-cause statement also notes that a week before Burton was shot, another man who had a child with Eubanks’ mother was shot in the same area. Eubanks was not charged in connection to that shooting.

Eubanks denied any involvement in the homicide when he was arrested, or that he was even in Oakland that day. He also denied that he had any association with the Lexus after February 2021, police said. He has pleaded not guilty.