Casey Lyn Way, 41, a White/Caucasian female, was walking with her boyfriend and their two dogs along East 14th Street near Williams Street late on the night of July 17, 2025, when a stranger approached them and struck up a brief conversation that began with requests for directions and a question about whether they were in Oakland. The exchange abruptly turned ominous as the man pressed about a red bandana she was wearing, implying gang affiliation; moments later he produced a black pistol,
racked the slide, and shot Casey Lyn Way at close range before fleeing in a black sedan. First responders could not save her; her boyfriend and the dogs were uninjured, and investigators recovered a 9mm casing and round at the scene.
Within hours, police in Dublin detained 21-year-old Rohith Sunil of San Jose after a report of a suspicious vehicle; officers found a 9mm handgun, black clothing, and a ski mask in the car. Though initially booked on separate gun charges, further investigation tied him to the San Leandro shooting, and he was later transferred and arrested on the homicide. Prosecutors and court records describe a chilling sequence captured in surveillance footage and corroborated by witness accounts, portraying a seemingly random encounter that escalated to a fatal attack on Casey Lyn Way, 41, as she walked her dogs.
On July 22, 2025, the Alameda County District Attorney's Office filed a murder charge against Rohith Sunil in the killing of Casey Lyn Way, 41, along with charges of assault with a semiautomatic firearm and carrying a loaded gun in public, and they added sentencing enhancements for personal use of a firearm causing death. News outlets reported that investigators do not believe the case is connected to a separate fatal dog-walking shooting in San Leandro the previous month. As of those filings, authorities had announced the single arrest of Rohith Sunil as the suspect in the shooting of Casey Lyn Way, with no indication of additional suspects.
The loss of Casey Lyn Way, 41, resonated widely as memorial posts and incident records documented the date and place of her death, underscoring the suddenness with which an ordinary evening walk turned into a tragedy. The location—East 14th Street and Williams Street in San Leandro—became a focal point for grief and fear in a community already unsettled by recent violence, while court documents and official releases charted the rapid investigative steps that led from the scene to an arrest and formal charges in the days that followed.
