Steven Taylor

Steven Taylor, 33, was shot and killed by San Leandro, California Police Officer Jason Fletcher inside a Walmart on April 18, 2020, after being reported for shoplifting while holding an aluminum baseball bat. Body camera video showed that within about 40 seconds of Fletcher's arrival, he Tased Taylor twice and then fired a single fatal round into his chest; Taylor's family said he was suffering a mental health crisis, not posing a deadly threat. Fletcher was charged with voluntary manslaughter in 2021, becoming a rare case of an officer criminally charged in California for an on-duty shooting. After more than five years of delays, prosecutorial turnover, and disputes over withheld evidence, Alameda County's district attorney moved to drop the charges in December 2025, and a judge dismissed the case just weeks before it was finally set to go to trial. No one has ever been convicted in Taylor's death.

San Leandro, CA · Alameda County

• 2020: Case opens — victim reported missing or found.
• Documented milestones (renewed investigation, media coverage, family advocacy) to be added as sourced.
• Present: case remains unresolved. No named suspect has been convicted.

• The shoplifting report, the confrontation, and the shooting, per San Leandro Police Department body camera footage and the Alameda County District Attorney's charging and dismissal filings.
• Fletcher deployed his Taser twice against Taylor before firing a single round into his chest, all within roughly 40 seconds of arriving on scene.
• Then-District Attorney Nancy O'Malley charged Fletcher with voluntary manslaughter in June 2021.
• The case was delayed for years amid multiple changes in Alameda County's district attorney's office, including recalled DA Pamela Price's tenure, during which Fletcher's attorney alleged use-of-force expert opinions favorable to the defense were withheld from the case record.
• A judge denied an earlier defense motion to dismiss the case in November 2025, ruling a jury should weigh the disputed evidence and allowing the case to proceed toward trial.
• Weeks later, in December 2025, District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson's office filed its own motion to drop the charges, stating prosecutors could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Fletcher had committed a crime or that he had not acted in lawful self-defense; a judge granted that dismissal on December 12, 2025.
• Taylor's family and community advocates, including his grandmother Addie Kitchen and the Anti-Police Terror Project's Cat Brooks, publicly said Fletcher had other options, including de-escalating or waiting for personnel trained in mental health crisis response.

• Whether Taylor's continued movement with the bat after being Tased twice constituted the kind of imminent deadly threat that legally justified Fletcher's shot, or whether de-escalation and additional time remained available, was the central dispute of the case and was never resolved by a jury, since it never reached trial.
• The specific use-of-force expert opinions that Fletcher's attorney alleged were withheld from the defense during a prior district attorney's tenure, and how directly they shaped the final dismissal, have been described by competing parties but not independently verified in a public record.
• Whether Taylor's documented mental health history was known to responding officers before or during the encounter has not been detailed in the available public charging and dismissal filings.

• ABC7 San Francisco — “Judge dismisses case against ex-police officer Jason Fletcher accused of killing man at San Leandro Walmart in 2020”
• San Francisco Chronicle — “Ex-San Leandro officer's case dismissed in fatal 2020 Walmart shooting”
• CBS News San Francisco — “Judge dismisses charges against former San Leandro police officer in 2020 killing of Steven Taylor”
• Project Cold Case
• Murder Accountability Project
• NamUs