New trial date set for Bay Area pair charged with 2018 killing
A Solano County Superior Court judge on Tuesday once again vacated a jury trial, the day it was previously scheduled to begin, and reset it for mid-January for a felony murder case against two men charged with a fatal 2018 shooting in Vallejo.
Daniel Anthony Street, 38, of Hercules, and Costello Blackwell, 48, of Vallejo, did not appear for proceedings in Department 1, and Judge Jeffrey C. Kauffman rescheduled it to begin at 10 a.m. Jan. 17 in the Justice Center in Fairfield.
The judge also scheduled some pretrial matters, including a trial management conference at 9 a.m. Jan. 11, court records show.
During the morning session, Fairfield criminal defense attorney Sal Giambona, who represents Blackwell, represented Street, whose attorney, Terry A. Ray, was absent. Deputy District Attorney William Ainsworth leads the prosecution and appeared for the people.
As previously reported, Blackwell was convicted in an earlier trial and sentenced for trying to kill a potential witness. He received 52 years to life for attempted murder.
He and Street – who each remain in custody without bail at the Stanton Correctional Facility in Fairfield – are accused of the Feb. 10, 2018, slaying of Daryl Huckaby, 47.
Blackwell was found guilty in March 2020 for trying to kill Teiquon Cortez, 29 at the time, on Nov. 5, 2018, also in Vallejo.
During the attempted murder trial, Cortez said he witnessed Blackwell, a co-worker at the Vallejo moving firm Royal Transport, fire one shot from a handgun, the bullet striking and killing Huckaby, who was in an RV that later crashed on Tuolumne Street.
Months later, on Nov. 1, Blackwell reportedly went to Cortez’s living quarters behind the moving company and shot him twice with a shotgun, wounding him.
During the trial, Deputy District Attorney Andrew Wood presented more than a dozen witnesses, including Vallejo police investigators, physicians, cellphone tower experts and at least one person who aided Cortez after he was shot.
Cortez testified that he walked across the street to a Shell gas station, where, bleeding profusely from the gun blasts to his left elbow and back, he received first aid before Vallejo paramedics and police officers arrived.
During court testimony an investigator for the defense, Eugene Borghello, said Cortez told him during a Solano County Jail interview in January 2019 that Blackwell shot him twice with a shotgun for “threatening Mr. Blackwell’s wife.”
Cortez also told Borghello, of the Special Investigations Group in Fairfield, that he was in a car with Blackwell when the defendant allegedly shot Huckaby.
After his attempted murder conviction, Blackwell also faced a court trial — during which the judge, not a jury, makes a final decision based on evidence and attorney arguments — on his alleged prior strikes.
It’s unclear how Street, who is charged with one count of murder, is connected to Huckaby’s killing. Blackwell is charged with one count of first-degree murder and one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm.
If convicted at trial for Huckaby’s death, Street and Blackwell face 25 years to life in prison on the charge, and likely more time each for prior convictions and enhancements.