Background: News footage from the Newbury Park, Calif., neighborhood where a teenager was killed on Dec. 5, 2024 (KTLA). Inset: Zuberi Sharp (Ventura County District Attorney).
A man from California has confessed to the gruesome murder of his teenage half-brother with a pickaxe while the two were inside a shed located behind their residence.
On Monday, 26-year-old Zuberi Sharp entered a guilty plea to second-degree murder for the brutal killing of his 15-year-old half-brother, Zayde Koehohou, on December 5, 2024. According to a press release from the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office, the tragic incident unfolded in a converted shed at their family home in Newbury Park, California. Their uncle reported hearing a “thud” while approaching the shed to check on the boys.
Upon entering, the uncle was met with a harrowing sight: Sharp standing over Zayde with a pickaxe in his hands.
Before authorities from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office could arrive following a 911 call from the boys’ mother, Jante Keohohou, around 8 p.m., Sharp had already fled the scene. Police later apprehended him at a nearby high school, where he was found naked and still holding the weapon used in the attack, as reported by KTLA.
When deputies reached the location, Zayde’s mother was found holding her critically injured son. Zayde, who had cerebral palsy, had sustained multiple severe head injuries and tragically succumbed to his wounds before reaching the hospital.
Local news outlet KTLA revealed that Sharp appeared to be struggling with mental health issues, which included an incident earlier that day where he had to be rescued from a storm drain. In an interview with Thousand Oaks Acorn approximately a month after the tragedy, Keohohou expressed that her elder son “didn’t know what he was doing” and emphasized that Sharp “loves his brothers, my boys loved each other.”
KTLA reported that Sharp is the son of a convicted murderer, Calvin Sharp, who killed a 6-year-old boy with a meat cleaver in 2007.
Sharp pleaded guilty to second-degree murder as well as the special circumstances added to the charges, including the attack on a vulnerable person. He is scheduled to be sentenced on May 5.
