Oakland: Tan DaGod murder prosecution falls apart, suspects to be released from jail
OAKLAND — As part of a plea deal that upends the prosecution over rapper Tan DaGod’s 2024 killing, both suspects have pleaded no contest to gun charges for a jail term that ends this year.
Dominc Gates, 21, and Richard James Romano, 32, both pleaded no contest to felony gun possession. They’re set to be sentenced later this year to a two-year prison term, but with good behavior Gates and Romano will be free by July and August, respectively.
As part of the deal, Alameda County prosecutors are dismissing the remainder of the case, including murder charges against both men. They were arrested and charged last year with murdering the rising Oakland rapper, Alliauna Green, during a hectic shootout at the grand opening of a North Oakland beauty salon Green was promoting.
But the case took a turn when police revealed at a December court hearing that Green, also known as Tan DaGod, had shot first at her killers, after they allegedly pulled guns near where she was standing with her boyfriend. The defense argued that Green had built a fraudulent violent persona — she made up a story about killing a violent ex-boyfriend and getting away with it — and on that day she saw a chance to back up her phony story with real violence.
Prosecutors did not immediately comment on the deal. Romano’s lawyer, Daniel Shriro, released a statement saying the outcome shows his client and Green acted in self-defense.
“Ms. Green initiated the confrontation, she threatened to get a gun, and then she followed through and started the shooting,” Shriro said. “The flawed police investigation delayed the truth coming out, but in the end we reached a just outcome.”
It is the second time Gates has been implicated in a fatal shooting, and this plea deal represents the only criminal penalty he’s ever had to pay for it. In June 2023, police identified him as one of several suspected gunmen in a wild shootout in East Oakland that resulted in the deaths of 23-year-old Idriek Patterson, of Newark, and 25-year-old Anteasa Collins, of Stockton. Prosecutors charged Gates with possessing firearms but the case was thrown out last August, records show.
Green, 27, was shot and killed July 13, 2024, on the 4000 block of Telegraph Avenue in North Oakland. Police claimed that Gates and Romano opened fire at her and her boyfriend during a confrontation at the event, and that Green was killed trying to protect her significant other. But a clear motive behind the confrontation was never made public.
Under the stage name Tan DaGod, Green was gaining recognition in the Bay Area rap scene, most notably for a claim that she had shot and killed an abusive ex-boyfriend but avoided prosecution for it. She upped the ante on this story by joking she had rolled the man’s ashes into a blunt and smoked them.
After her death, Oakland police looked into the whole thing and determined the story had been a concoction. She had never been a suspect in any homicide investigation, not involving an ex-boyfriend nor anyone else. A police detective testified the story had been invented “for clout.”
Like Green, Gates had been attempting to build a career as an Oakland rapper, under the stage name BNC 4nero, according to court records. He appeared in music videos alongside another of the suspects in the June 2023 double homicide.