One group came to Oakland for drinking and dining, another for ‘bipping’ and boosting. It ended in murder.

OAKLAND — A Pinole resident has been convicted of murdering a man who was out with friends for a night of dining and drinking when they happened upon a group who’d come to Oakland to break into cars, court records show.

Patrick Rushing, 35, was convicted of second-degree murder with an enhancement for intentional discharge of a gun in the Feb. 26, 2023 killing of 44-year-old Phoutsamay “Phil” Norawong. The prelude to murder started months earlier, with a seemingly unrelated event: Rushing fronted about four pounds of marijuana to a man named Terrance Rose, 35, with the expectation he’d be paid back later. But Rose subsequently failed a drug test while on probation for a federal fentanyl and gun possession case, and ended up doing a stint in jail for it, court records show.

Rose would later testify that when he got out of jail, Rushing told Rose he still owed Rushing thousands of dollars for the marijuana, and proposed that on Feb. 25, 2023 they go out “bipping” — slang for car burglarizing — in Oakland to make up for it. Rushing was the alleged burglary, while Rose was his driver, and Rose’s cousin reportedly tagged along for the ride.

“He was like, ‘You’re just gonna be the driver. You don’t have to worry about nothing,’ you know,” Rose testified at the 2024 preliminary hearing.

That same night, Norawong and two friends went barhopping around Oakland’s Chinatown neighborhood, and ended up coming across Rushing. Among the small group of longtime friends was a man known as “Ricky” who had a gun on him and was so drunk he claimed he couldn’t remember exactly what transpired. Their third friend testified that he and Rushing began to yell and swear at each other and that Ricky pulled up his shirt to show his gun after Rushing accosted them and demanded property.

Rose, testifying as part of a plea deal that required his cooperation, said that Ricky actually pointed the gun at Rushing and threatened to shoot him. Rose said he calmed the situation down and got Rushing back into the car. Then, Rushing told him to make a few turns and bring the car around, where Norawong and his two friends were.

“He popped the door open and he kind of like stood up like out the car and he pulled his gun out,” Rose testified. “I seen the gun come up and then I started hearing shots go off … I ducked down, slouched down in my driver’s seat.”

Shots were fired. Ricky pulled his pistol and shot back, according to eyewitness testimony, striking Rose’s vehicle but failing to hit any of the occupants. At the preliminary hearing, he testified he was blackout drunk and only remembers leaving a bar a short time before the shooting.

“The next thing I remember was holding up my friend Phillip. He was shot. I just saw blood and I was holding him up, screaming for help,” he said. Norawong had been mortally wounded by a shot to the abdomen.

Rose and Rushing drove back to Treasure Island, where Rose lived. He testified he was “scared” and “panicking” the whole time.

“I just kept asking like, ‘What the (expletive) was that all about? What am I going to do. This is my wife’s car,'” Rose testified. He said Rushing asked him, rhetorically, what he expected to happen after Ricky pulled a gun on him, and suggested he report the car stolen.

Rose testified he told his wife that the car had been stolen and she believed him. She was initially charged with accessory but the case was later thrown out, records show.

After instructing her to make the false report, Rose said he took the car to a repair shop to fix the bullet holes. Police arrested him there, booked him for murder, and he said he called Rushing from jail.

“(Rushing) was pretty much like, ‘Don’t worry about anything. You’re going to be fine,'” Rose testified in 2024. “And then I was telling him like, ‘No I’m not. They’re charging me with this murder.'”

In November 2024, Rose formally accepted a deal for his cooperation, agreeing to be sentenced to three years he had already served if he testified truthfully. By then, Rose had already testified at the July 2024 preliminary hearing, but did so as a defense witness putting his lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Marlene Jobe, in the odd position of essentially gathering testimony from her own client so that prosecutors could use it against Rushing.

Rushing was charged in May 2023, after he had been arrested in a nonfatal San Francisco shooting during a 4/20 celebration. In that incident, his lawyer argued that Rushing caught an auto burglar in the act and that the burglar either fired first or almost “simultaneously” with Rushing.

Norawong was killed just nine days after Rose was released from federal prison after serving a four-year sentence for selling fentanyl and possessing a pistol as a felon in San Francisco. In that case, Rose’s wife wrote a support letter to the judge predicting that her husband would become an “outstanding citizen” upon his release.

Now that he has been convicted of murder, Rushing is awaiting a sentencing set for Jan. 23, 2026. In the meantime, he remains at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, court records show.