Police say the same man and woman, both suspects in police ramming incident, keep turning up at Oakland homicides

OAKLAND — Charges have been filed against an East Bay man and woman in connection with a March police chase where an Alameda officer’s vehicle was rammed, court records show.

But both suspects are well-known to police because their names keep coming up in homicide investigations. The couple, identified in court papers as 35-year-old Jorge “Yogi” Rodriguez and 32-year-old Marie Rayann Krum, were named by eyewitnesses to have been present for a 2023 homicide, as well as a fatal shooting that occurred just three weeks ago, according to police.

Rodriguez was arrested Aug. 18, after being named as a person of interest in the Aug. 8 killing of 41-year-old Ivan Ortegon, who was fatally shot by a still-unidentified person wearing a creepy clown mask and donning a white jumpsuit, authorities said. The shooting happened on the railroad tracks near the 5900 block of Coliseum Way in East Oakland.

Rodriguez hasn’t been charged in Ortegon’s killing but was charged with felony assault on an officer and evading police in the March incident, following his arrest.

Krum, meanwhile, is facing charges of possessing and receiving the stolen vehicle that Rodriguez allegedly rammed into the occupied patrol car of Alameda police Officer Brock DeWitt on March 11. When she was arrested in July, she allegedly identified herself on surveillance video and confessed to her role in the chase, explaining that she didn’t come forward because she and her boyfriend, Rodriguez, are living a “felon lifestyle,” according to police statements in court filings.

Last year, Krum and Rodriguez were listed as potential witnesses to the May 30, 2023 killing of 49-year-old James Rodriguez, who was shot and killed near 100th Avenue and Pearmain Street in East Oakland, allegedly by his girlfriend, 42-year-old Yaeko Payne, who faces a murder charge. James Rodriguez, who has no apparent relation to Jorge Rodriguez, had been arguing throughout the day with Payne when Jorge Rodriguez and Krum showed up to borrow money from him, and ended up witnessing the deadly violence that transpired, according to police.

Oakland police Sgt. Michael Romans-Rowe testified at Payne’s preliminary hearing last March that Krum recounted parts of the incident to police, alleging that James Rodriguez bumped Payne, who suffered a bloody lip. Payne reportedly walked away from the argument, returned with a firearm and shot at Rodriguez twice, hitting him just below the armpit. He died within minutes, according to police.

When Rodriguez was shot, he was yelling “do it, do it, do it,” to Payne as she pointed a rifle at him, according to Romans-Rowe’s testimony. Payne was held to answer on murder, assault and gun possession charges at the hearing’s end, despite attempts by her lawyer to argue that it was lawful self-defense and that Payne was a victim of ongoing domestic abuse.

“My hat’s off to you. You have put together a very good theory of what happened with the details of who touched who at what point, but none of that is supported by the evidence,” Alameda County Judge Delia Trevino told Payne’s lawyer at the hearing’s end. She later added, “It is unfortunate at preliminary we don’t always get all the evidence, but the evidence I have before me, I do believe support these charges.”

The case was bolstered by two jailhouse witnesses, one of whom claimed that Payne confessed to killing James Rodriguez and leaving the gun with Krum and Jorge Rodriguez, but authorities never found it. Both jailhouse informants said Payne killed James Rodriguez because she was “tired of him beating her,” according to police testimony.

Police were able to identify and track down Krum in that case, because just three weeks earlier she’d been named as a person of interest in a nonfatal shooting. In that case, Krum and a woman allegedly fought outside a 24-Hour Fitness in Oakland — over a shared romantic interest — and a man who lived in an RV in the area fired a shot into the other woman’s leg. Krum later denied in a police interview that she had ordered the “leg check,” according to police statement in court records.

More recently, Jorge Rodriguez and Krum were named by an eyewitness as being in the area for Ortegon’s killing. Police have already identified several potential suspects and persons of interest in that case, with several witnesses claiming entirely different scenarios, motives and shooters were behind it. Investigators have arrested at least three people who were believed to be in the area, but say they’re still working to figure out who actually killed Ortegon and why.