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VALLEJO — A man was shot and killed by an off-duty Richmond officer Sunday evening in the parking lot of a gas station and popular restaurant, police said.
The shooting occurred around 5:30 p.m. Sunday, near the Valero gas station and JJ’s Fish and Chicken at Fairgrounds and Sereno Drives. Several area residents told reporters that they heard six to seven shots.
A law enforcement source — as well as several onlookers and social media postings — identified the deceased man as Eric Reason, 38, a Vallejo resident. Police say more than one gun was recovered at the site of the shooting.
The shooting followed some kind of confrontation between Reason and the officer, according to police and several onlookers.
Reason was known as a local rapper who went by the stage name “Cheddaman,” and appeared on a song alongside popular California rapper Mac Mall on the compilation album 2009 Country Club Crest: 3 C’s Down. Relatives told KTVU and NBC that Reason was a father of six, who was working in construction.
Reason’s body remained in the middle of Sereno Drive, covered by a yellow tarp, for three hours after the shooting. A dark-colored van was parked in the middle of the parking lot, about 50 feet away from where he was fatally wounded.
Around 8:30 p.m., several officers loaded Reason’s body onto a gurney and into a white minivan that had driven up. As this occurred, a large crowd of onlookers reacted with anger and sadness, some yelling challenges to the officers, while others formed a circle and began reciting prayers.
Police radio traffic from Sunday evening indicates that the Richmond officer was in touch with local dispatchers within minutes of the shooting.
“The responsible is advising he’s (a police officer). Unknown from where,” a female dispatcher can be heard saying. A male voice responds, telling the dispatcher to “call me” when she finds out what agency the shooter is with.
A Vallejo police news release says that the investigation, “is in the very early stages and an update will be provided when further information is obtained.” Per Solano County protocol, all shootings involving an officer are investigated by the district attorney as well as police.
This was Vallejo’s 12th homicide this year.
Anyone with information or who witnessed the shooting is asked to call Vallejo police Detective Scott Yates at 707-648-4533 or Detective Jason Scott at 707-648-4531.
Check back for updates 


This screen-grab from a video shows a woman who was selling churros inside a subway station being accosted by the NYPD.
This screen-grab from a video shows a woman who was selling churros inside a subway station being accosted by the NYPD. ((Twitter/@SofiaBNewman))
A longtime sweets saleswoman at a Brooklyn subway station got unsavory treatment from police officers — and a video of her arrest has some elected officials questioning the NYPD’s approach to “quality of life” crimes in the city’s transit system.
A video widely shared online shows police officers detaining the woman, who was selling churros at the Broadway Junction station Friday. She wept as cops seized her churro cart and briefly arrested her about 5:30 p.m., right in the middle of a busy rush hour.
The woman was issued a summons and “was briefly handcuffed” as “she refused to cooperate,” police said. “Her property was vouchered as arrest evidence and she was released within minutes."
The NYPD said in a statement that police have given the woman 10 summonses over the past five months for unlicensed vending at the subway stop, which is home to the NYPD’s 33rd Transit District.
City Councilman Rafael Espinal (D-Brooklyn) said the cops “overreached” by arresting the woman.
“This is a woman who has been selling churros in that station for a very long time,” said Espinal, whose district includes the Broadway Junction station. “She’s very familiar to subway riders in that area and has never posed any risk or issues to anyone."
NYC Transit rules ban “the solicitation of money or payment for food, goods, services or entertainment” on the subway, a regulation that also cracks down on buskers and “showtime” dancers.
A complicated network of regulations makes it difficult for any vendor to obtain a license to sell food in NYC’s public spaces.
The city Health Department has capped the number of permits available for food carts and trucks at 4,000, Deputy Commissioner Corrinne Schiff told Council members at a hearing in April.
That cap has been in place since 1983, and forces many vendors to pay more than $10,000 on the black market to obtain a license to sell food. Legislation introduced in the Council last year would expand the cap, and another bill introduced by state Sen. Jessica Ramos (D-Queens) would eliminate it entirely.
While selling food in the subway remains a no-no without Metropolitan Transportation Authority approval, expensive leases and costly insurance policies have forced many legal subway newsstand owners to close in recent years.
Meanwhile, roughly 40% of the 326 retail spaces on NYC Transit property were empty or shuttered earlier this year, according to a Daily News analysis.
The MTA has moved to fill some of those vacancies by leasing spaces to companies that supply vending machines that sell travel-sized toiletries and snacks — but not newspapers.
Some advocates said churro vendors should not be a priority for police officers in the subway, anyway.
Riders Alliance spokesman Danny Pearlstein said the churro saleswoman’s arrest shows why Gov. Cuomo’s recent decision to deploy hundreds of new MTA-employed cops into the subway is a bad idea.
“This is what happens when cops have nothing to do,” said Pearlstein. “We will see these incidents of overwhelming force that are totally unjustified, and they’ll ultimately come at the expense of better transit service.”
But Transport Workers Union Local 100 President Tony Utano said the additional cops are needed “to deter the horrendous assaults and abuse directed at bus and subway workers every day.”
Asked about the move to deploy more cops to the subways, Cuomo spokeswoman Dani Lever said that “crime is a major issue on the subways," citing NYPD data that show arrests for certain felonies in the subway have increased this year.
But complaints about all major felonies in the subway actually dipped by 3.3% in the first 10 months of 2019 from the same corresponding last year.
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