Two defense attorneys withdrew Tuesday from the case of a Sacramento man charged with the January 2021 killing of two females, one of them a minor, and a new attorney was assigned to replace them.
During a morning proceeding in Department 1, the attorneys who for months have represented Raymond Michael Weber, Tim Pori and Leslie Prince, confirmed to Solano County Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Kauffman that they wished to withdraw.
Kauffman agreed to their requests, but immediately appointed Chief Deputy Public Defender Tamani Taylor, who was present for the hearing, to take their place.
Weber, 33, shackled at the waist in a striped jail jumpsuit, his black hair in four long braids, appeared for a trial setting, an order to show cause, and the attorneys’ motion to withdraw.
Kauffman then ordered Taylor, Weber and Deputy District Attorney Eric Charm, who leads the prosecution, to return for a rescheduled trial setting at 9 a.m. Jan. 28 in the Justice Center in Fairfield.
The Weber case is notable not only because it’s a double murder but also because he livestreamed some of crimes and their aftermath in a Vacaville apartment, investigators said.
Court records show that criminal proceedings against Weber were suspended for a time when his competency was questioned; however, Kauffman reinstated proceedings and determined there was enough evidence to hold him for further arraignment and trial.
Weber is accused of shooting and killing Savannah Theberge, 27, with ties to Utah and Georgia, and a 15-year-old girl from Elk Grove during the early hours of Jan. 30 in an apartment in the 500 block of Rocky Hill Road.
During a July preliminary hearing, Vacaville police officers testified that Weber was a human trafficker who used romance to recruit a victim and keep them in line with violence, likening the relationship to “modern-day slavery.”
Detective Steven Gunderson testified that he spoke with the mother of the slain teenager before she was killed, saying that she had earlier tried to stop the driver of a black sedan, whom she described as a “light-skinned African-American male with dreadlocks” of black and brown hair, from driving away with her daughter.
He said the girl’s cellphone was tracked to the Oxford Suites, a Rohnert Park hotel. Another investigator obtained a receipt from the hotel show that Theberge had registered using her credit card. Additionally, investigators obtained hotel surveillance video footage from Jan. 23, 2021, showing Weber standing outside the elevator, video from the early morning hours of Jan. 24 showing Weber and the girl, and more footage showing Theberge outside the hotel room.
Gunderson also said there was evidence that Theberge had checked into a Super 8 motel in Hayward on Jan. 24 and through Jan. 26. Charm showed Gunderson still images from surveillance cameras showing Theberge at the Foothill Boulevard motel.
Earlier testimony included that of Makayla McCalebb, 19, a cousin of Weber, who told her mother that Weber was raping a young girl hours before he shot and killed her and Theberge.
McCalebb’s relationship with Weber changed suddenly when he accused her of giving a cell phone to the teenage girl on Jan. 29, angering him so much he began choking McCalebb, then 17, frightening her. She told Charm, “I knew something was terribly, terribly wrong.”
Vacaville Police Sgt. Erik Watts, Charm’s lead investigator during the hearing, testified that he was called to the Rocky Hill Veterans Apartments shortly after a 12:40 a.m. 911 call on Jan. 30.
Watts said his investigation revealed Weber had accused the two females of “turning on him,” and that he had paced around the apartment with a gun in his hand.
The sergeant confirmed that police responded to the apartment complex shortly after 12:40 a.m., when a woman reported that a man armed with a handgun was livestreaming from an apartment where two women, not moving, were lying on the floor.
Upon their arrival, police said the man, later identified as Weber, had barricaded himself inside. SWAT and Critical Incident Negotiation teams were deployed.
Negotiations were unsuccessful, neighbors were evacuated and flash bangs and CS gas — a powder that when mixed with a solvent becomes an aerosol in tear gas — were then discharged into the apartment. Officers found Weber hiding there and, following a brief struggle, shot him with a Taser to bring him under control. He was arrested at 8:32 a.m.
Judge Kauffman has noted that Weber was convicted in 2006 of assault with a firearm and in 2016 of unlawful possession of a controlled substance while armed, both in Sacramento and both felonies. Weber also faces charges of domestic violence and making terrorist threats, both cited in an out-of-county warrant.
