SAN JOSE, Calif. — Four men pleaded no contest Monday in a sweeping gang shooting case that illuminated reams of racist text messages shared between dozens of Antioch police officers.

Terryon Pugh, Eric Windom, Keyshawn McGee and Trent Allen all pleaded no contest Monday to voluntary manslaughter and attempted murder in the March 2021 shooting that led to the death of Arnold Marcel Hawkins, 23.

Pugh is expected to receive 20 years in prison under a plea deal with the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office. Windom and Allen are expected to be sentenced to 19 years in prison, and McGee agreed to a deal calling for 13 years and 8 months behind bars. Pugh and Windom are expected to be sentenced Wednesday, while Allen and McGee are set to be sentenced Friday.

In addition, Pugh pleaded no contest to attempted murder in separate shooting at a 76 gas station a week before Hawkins’ death. Also, Windom and Allen accepted plea deals in unrelated, earlier robbery cases.

The plea deals signal the end to a yearslong legal saga that began with a deadly shooting in Oakland three years ago and later led to explosive revelations of pervasive racism throughout the Antioch Police Department, along with court rulings slamming racist decisions by the Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office.

Pugh, Windom, McGee and Allen were initially arrested and charged with murder and attempted murder after prosecutors claimed they traveled together from San Leandro to Antioch on March 9, 2021, and shot two people. One of those people, Hawkins, died of his injuries six months after the shooting.

Prosecutors also alleged the men committed crimes to benefit an Oakland-based gang.

But in early 2022, a second, parallel scandal emerged when the FBI and Contra Costa prosecutors began investigating more than a dozen Antioch and Pittsburg cops for numerous alleged crimes, including use of force and civil rights violations. After seizing a number of officers’ phones, investigators found dozens of Antioch cops had exchanged racist, sexist and homophobic text messages that were littered with boasts by officers who appeared to revel in violating residents’ civil liberties, often without fear of reprisals from their supervisors.

Many of the messages included defendants in this case. For example, eight Antioch gang unit police officers shared messages littered with racial slurs — including references to Black people as “gorillas” — that appeared to glorify the violence used in arresting Pugh and Allen. At one point, a white officer, Eric Rombough, shared pictures of Pugh and Allen in their hospital beds before mocking their injuries.

Rombough told an officer, “Bro, my foot hurts,” according to a transcript of the texts obtained by this news organization. When asked if he kicked one of the men, Rombough responded “Yup, like a f------ field goal,” the transcript said. He added, “Gotta stop kicking n-----s in their head.”

The criminal prosecutions began to crumble not long after the racist messages became public.

In May 2023, Contra Costa Judge David Goldstein dismissed gang charges against the four men under California’s Racial Justice Act, a relatively new state law intended to weed out racism in the superior courts. Specifically, Goldstein pointed to a decade of data showing that Black people were from 6% to 8% more likely to be charged with “special circumstance gang enhancements” than people who weren’t Black.

In February, Goldstein dealt another major blow to the case by tossing all other special circumstances charges against the four men. The dismissal of those charges, which accused the men of lying in wait ahead of the killing, meant the men no longer faced potential sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

In addition, Goldstein also ruled that during any potential trial, defense attorneys could impeach eight officers with the fact that they violated the Racial Justice Act during the investigation.

A message by this newspaper seeking comment from the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office was not immediately returned. Attorneys for Allen and Windom declined to comment, while an attorney for Pugh could not immediately be reached.

“The scales of justice were tipped differently in this case because the text message scandal came out and affected the credibility of the prosecution’s witnesses from the Antioch Police Department,” said Anthony Ashe, the attorney for McGhee.

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