Oakland Officers Laughed After Fatal 'Ghost Chase' Crash

Body camera footage released in court this week shows two former Oakland police officers laughing after a high-speed pursuit they initiated ended with a man dead on a sidewalk on International Boulevard.

The footage is central to a wrongful death civil lawsuit brought by the family of Lolomanaia “Lolo” Soakai, a 28-year-old who was killed on June 26, 2022, when a car fleeing the officers slammed into a parked vehicle near a taco stand at International and 54th Avenue. Attorneys for the Soakai family presented a 25-minute video compilation in court this week, combining surveillance footage and bodycam recordings that had never before been made public.

The sequence of events began after 1 a.m., when rookie officers Walid Abdelaziz and Jimmy Marin-Coronel spotted 19-year-old Arnold Linaldi doing donuts in his Nissan 350Z at an intersection on International Boulevard. What followed, according to the lawsuit and the newly released footage, was a high-speed pursuit conducted without lights or sirens active. In law enforcement terminology, that’s a “ghost chase,” and it is explicitly against Oakland Police Department policy.

The bodycam audio captured immediately after the crash is damning. Abdelaziz asks his partner whether Linaldi had crashed, using the radio code “901.” Marin-Coronel responds that he can’t tell. Abdelaziz says they should go back, and then Marin-Coronel, apparently now able to see the wreck, says the driver had collided hard with a truck. Abdelaziz responds: “Man, listen. I wouldn’t mind going over there. Hopefully he’s fucking dead.” The two officers laugh.

Linaldi survived. Soakai, whose car was parked at the scene, did not. The compilation also shows Soakai’s mother wailing over her son’s body on the sidewalk.

Civil rights attorney Adante Pointer, who represents the Soakai family along with co-counsel Patrick Buelna, addressed the footage after presenting it in court. “The two officers not only engaged in a ghost chase and took a person’s life,” Pointer said, “but they also engaged in a conspiracy to cover it up. And then went to many lengths to avoid accountability. My heart broke for this family. But I also have a rage in me, that people sworn to protect us could be so callous.”

The conspiracy allegation is a significant thread running through the case. Pointer and Buelna argue that after the crash, the officers attempted to leave the scene to avoid appearing connected to the pursuit that triggered it. The case is not just about a policy violation that ended in a death. It is also about what the officers did next.

Both Abdelaziz and Marin-Coronel were removed from duty following the incident and resigned last March. But they have not accepted civil liability quietly. The former officers have mounted an aggressive legal defense, filing multiple motions to dismiss and appealing the case all the way to the Supreme Court in January over a central question: whether a police officer can be held civilly liable for a death that occurs in the course of their official duties.

The argument carries weight in other contexts, but Pointer and Buelna contend this case is different precisely because the officers were violating department policy at the time. A ghost chase isn’t an authorized use of force or a sanctioned tactic. It is, by the department’s own rules, something officers are not supposed to do. That distinction may ultimately determine whether the civil suit succeeds.

For anyone who has watched the Bay Area’s ongoing debates about police accountability, use-of-force policy, and the gap between what departments say they permit and what officers actually do in the field, the Soakai case puts those questions into unusually sharp relief. The footage doesn’t require much interpretation. Two officers pursued a car without authorization, a young man died, and the officers laughed about hoping he was dead.

The wrongful death trial continues.