Rodeo man gets 24 years for fatal shooting during marijuana ‘finesse’ deal

OAKLAND — Seven years after he was charged, a Rodeo man was sentenced to 24 years for killing a man during a marijuana deal that turned violent.

Robert Wilder, 33, is in California State Prison Centinela after pleading no contest to voluntary manslaughter through a plea deal with Alameda County prosecutors, court records show. The victim, 23-year-old Ruben Alvarado Jr., was shot and killed a little before 11 p.m. on Dec. 22, 2016, inside a relative’s SUV in the 8000 block of Olive Street in Oakland, police said at the time.

Wilder told police that the gun went off accidentally when he was pulling it out of his hooded sweatshirt, according to testimony at his preliminary hearing. His co-defendant, Joe’vonnie Wafer, 28, told police that it wasn’t supposed to be a homicide but that there was a plan to “finesse” Alvarado, implying the deal had been a setup for a robbery, court records show.

Police said that the two took marijuana from Alvarado and split it after the shooting.

Wafer pleaded no contest to attempted robbery in 2021, and was sentenced to five years, as part of a plea deal with prosecutors. Wilder’s plea agreement, finalized in early February 2025, required him to plead no contest to manslaughter for the murder charge to be dismissed.

Wilder’s lawyer, Darryl Stallworth, called him “one of the nicest young men” Stallworth has known, and said it was an “appropriate resolution” because Wilder initially faced life without parole. Wilder gets credit for seven-and-a-half years toward his sentence, time he spent in Santa Rita Jail, plus good behavior, since his arrest in 2018.

“He made a horrible decision that result in the loss of life,” Stallworth said. “He has always been responsible and remorseful.”