{"id":743,"date":"2026-05-29T11:39:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T11:39:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=743"},"modified":"2026-05-29T11:39:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T11:39:18","slug":"im-sorry-she-was-begging-for-help-to-find-her-sister-in-oakland-then-came-boyfriends-alleged-confession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=743","title":{"rendered":"‘I’m sorry’: She was begging for help to find her sister in Oakland. Then came boyfriend’s alleged confession"},"content":{"rendered":"
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OAKLAND \u2014 \u201cPlease, Amadi.\u201d<\/p>\n

The August 2023 text came from the sister of Brenda Diaz, a 30-year-old Bay Area woman who disappeared after leaving her job at an exclusive Marin County fitness club days earlier. The only person who seemed to know something, her boyfriend Amadi Monroe, was being cagey about it, insisting he\u2019d tell Diaz\u2019s sister everything \u2014 only if she met face-to-face, according to court records.<\/p>\n

Read more An \u2018occupational hazard\u2019: Even in California, women in elected office face more abuse than men<\/a><\/p>\n

Diaz\u2019s sister resisted the meeting, a decision that could have saved her life. By the time Oakland police caught up with Monroe, he was a suspect in two homicides and two nonfatal shootings.<\/p>\n

Police allege that he killed Diaz inside her Lexus SUV, then drove her body from Marin County to Oakland, where he shot and killed his cocaine dealer, Jerald Larnell Clark II, court records show. He faces pending murder and gun possession charges. Now, Monroe\u2019s preliminary hearing has offered the public a glimpse into the tragic day in 2023.<\/p>\n

Both victims\u2019 loved ones were left with no explanation other than Monroe\u2019s increasingly erratic behavior, fueled by his perception that \u201csomebody\u201d was plotting to murder him.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know your sister have (sic) been setting me up to be killed. Don\u2019t act like you don\u2019t know,\u201d he allegedly texted Diaz\u2019s sister.<\/p>\n

Testimony describes Clark\u2019s final \u201cI love you\u201d to his wife before he reluctantly left his home to meet Monroe, how an earlier tragedy may have caused Monroe\u2019s mental breakdown, and how Monroe showed up to his mother\u2019s house for one last home-cooked meal before Oakland cops stormed the residence and hauled him off to jail.<\/p>\n

The first clue that Monroe was potentially leaving a trail of shooting victims around the Bay Area came when Diaz\u2019s sister received a flurry of hastily-written text messages that would later be read aloud in court. She\u2019d been begging him for information, continuing to press through his evasiveness and insistence on an in-person meeting. Finally, nearly three full days after Diaz\u2019s disappearance, he broke, she testified.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI\u2019m not gonna lie,\u201d Monroe wrote in one text. He said he was being followed by people who wanted to kill him, and that Diaz was part of the plot. \u201cDey pullup n g (sic) panic thinking they was gone kill me. I shot bullet hit Brenda. I\u2019ll turn myself in\u2026I\u2019m sorry. I was lost, scared in panic. I\u2019m sorry. I promise wasn\u2019t my fault.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the haunting garble of messages, one stood out: \u201cShe\u2019s at the pier n (sic) Oakland.\u201d Police followed up and discovered Diaz\u2019s body inside her Lexus SUV, parked on the 900 block of 22nd Avenue, near the Embarcadero waterfront in Oakland. By that time the Lexus had been named as a suspect vehicle in three other Aug. 8, 2023 shootings: one in San Pablo with no victims, another that left a woman bruised from a bullet in Richmond, and the killing of Clark in front of his Oakland home, police testified.<\/p>\n

But the story behind the shootings truly begins a year earlier, on Sept. 16, 2022, when a motorcyclist crashed into a fence on Northgate Avenue, catapulting himself down 25 feet to the BART tracks, where he was struck and killed by a train. It was 35-year-old Alvin Monroe Jr., Amadi Monroe\u2019s older brother, and the death gutted the younger Monroe. It was compounded when a West Contra Costa storage unit caught fire, destroying Alvin\u2019s belongings, their mother testified.<\/p>\n

Monroe came to believe the fire was no accident, that it was part of a plot targeting him. This led to disturbing and obsessive behavior that was noticed by Diaz, Monroe\u2019s mom, and Clark, whose widow testified she had cautioned him to stay away from the erratic man she knew as \u201cBang\u201d who would occasionally drop by to buy cocaine.<\/p>\n

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Even in a police interrogation room after both homicides, Monroe doubled down on the idea that he was being followed, an Oakland detective testified. More than once, he accused Diaz of being part of the plot to kill him, according to both police and members of the Monroe and Diaz family.<\/p>\n

Read more Goldberg: The agony around the Democrats\u2019 mysterious, ridiculous autopsy<\/a><\/p>\n

On July 20, 2023, just 19 days before Monroe allegedly killed her, Diaz had put up $20,000 to bail him out of jail in a nonfatal shooting case. Judge Thomas Nixon remarked, \u201cI really shouldn\u2019t do that,\u201d before lowering Monroe\u2019s bail from $300,000 to $200,000 at an earlier court hearing, court records show.<\/p>\n

Diaz may have sensed danger. The day of her death, she texted Monroe\u2019s mother, \u201cI\u2019m done with your crazy son,\u201d and said that she had lived to regret another fateful decision, according to the testimony.<\/p>\n

\u201cI regret putting my name on a bond for your son,\u201d Diaz texted Monroe\u2019s mother. \u201cHe\u2019s telling me I\u2019m setting him up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Monroe\u2019s mom doubled down.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are full of s\u2014,\u201d she replied. \u201cYou know Amadi is sick. He got to find himself again. He died when AJ died. If you can\u2019t understand that, that\u2019s on you. You still signed that bail. I love you and Amadi.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the witness stand, Monroe\u2019s mother said she remains confident she could have prevented the tragedy that followed. She denied telling Diaz not to call police, even though prosecutors say a text that read \u201cno police\u201d was sent from Monroe\u2019s mother\u2019s phone to Diaz shortly before the homicide.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always taught my son do not hurt anybody, no woman, no man, no child, no one,\u201d Monroe\u2019s mother testified. \u201cAnd I would have stopped it \u2026 If he was harming her, doing anything, I\u2019d have stepped into it, right in the middle, and put a stop to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Diaz was allegedly shot and killed at a Target parking lot in Marin County on Aug. 8, 2023, hours before Clark would meet a similar fate. Clark\u2019s widow testified that he told her before walking out the front door he was going to \u201cmeet Bang,\u201d then asked, \u201cdid you hear me?\u201d Then he walked to the door, hesitated, turned around, and said, \u201cI love you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The woman watched him leave, and heard shots ring out moments later. Video from a nearby residence\u2019s surveillance camera captured someone shooting Clark from Diaz\u2019s Lexus, authorities testified. Clark was pronounced dead later that evening, at Highland Hospital.<\/p>\n

As Oakland police were discovering Diaz\u2019s body in Oakland on the morning of Aug. 11, 2023, Monroe was exchanging \u201cI love you\u2019s\u201d with his mother. She testified he came to her home and requested his mom make him chicken. She prepared the meal as she\u2019d done many times before, then went outside to drink a beer while he ate, she testified.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe next thing, the police was grabbing me to get me away. I didn\u2019t know what was going on,\u201d she testified.<\/p>\n

Monroe has been in jail ever since. His next court date has been set for June 12, but the trial hasn\u2019t yet been scheduled.<\/p>\n

Read more Horoscopes May 29, 2026: Riley Keough, be original and disciplined<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Please Amadi,” Brenda Diaz’s sister texted the suspected killer, unaware that he was allegedly driving the victim’s body to Oakland to shoot and kill another person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":742,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n‘I’m sorry’: She was begging for help to find her sister in Oakland. 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