Frank Spillman, 94, complained for years about how his landlord was harassing him, neighbors say. With a few choice curse words, Spillman railed about how Kulbushan Gupta would demand that he clean the yard, rake the leaves and keep the Oakland property neat.
Spillman worried constantly that Gupta, 64, planned to evict him and even voiced suspicions that Gupta had poisoned his beloved chickens - the ones that gave him eggs - because the landlord was upset about their droppings.
The enmity between the two men erupted in violence shortly before 7:30 p.m. Thursday when Spillman, who has hearing problems, walks with a cane and kept a .22-caliber weapon with him for protection, shot and killed Gupta when the landlord visited his home in the Fruitvale district, police said.
Gupta staggered from the two-story house at 4108 E. 12th St. and into the street. Spillman went down the stairs after him, firing several more shots, police said. Gupta collapsed in an adjacent store parking lot and died three hours later at Highland Hospital in Oakland.
Neighbor Robert Villegas, 51, said he heard the sound of a metal pipe striking something, then someone moaning, before at least five shots rang out.
Villegas said the shooting was the culmination of a dispute between the two men over keeping the property clean. He said he sometimes heard Gupta "yelling stuff at workers back there. If I was working for him, I wouldn't want somebody yelling at me like that."
Villegas said Gupta "had been trying to get (Spillman) evicted out of the property, if I heard him correctly. (Spillman) said he gave him a bad time about things. Frank was pretty unhappy with his landlord."
Gupta, married and the father of three grown children, had served as president of the Rental Housing Association of Northern Alameda County, a landlords group.
The native of Mumbai, India, bought his first commercial property in 1976, a hotel in East Oakland, according to the association. Spillman has lived at the East 12th Street home for at least 35 years, and Gupta was his landlord for at least a decade, neighbors said.
Despite Spillman's suspicions, it's not known whether Gupta was really trying to evict him.
Family and friends gathered on Friday at Gupta's home in the city's Montclair district, where his wife, Rupa, was in seclusion. A relative described Gupta, whom friends knew as "Joe," as a good person but declined to comment further.
Steve Edrington, executive director of the Rental Housing Association of Northern Alameda County, said Gupta's was "our classic immigrant story of working hard and becoming successful. It seems that his death was just another sad chapter in Oakland's out-of-control crime. It is unimaginable that someone who worked as hard and gave back to the community such as he did, would end up senselessly gunned down."
After the shooting, Spillman went back into his home and held officers at bay until 11 p.m. Thursday, when a SWAT team distracted him and subdued him with a Taser stun gun.
Spillman, one of the oldest homicide suspects ever in the Bay Area, was expected to be held in a single cell at Santa Rita Jail in Dublin after being medically cleared, said sheriff's Sgt. J.D. Nelson.
Spillman is being held in an Alameda County jail without bail on suspicion of murder. Prosecutors are expected to review the case Monday to decide whether to file charges.
Officer Roland Holmgren, an Oakland police spokesman, said it is possible that Spillman was suffering from some kind of dementia. Even so, "I don't think it's up for us to determine whether or not he is fit to stand trial," Holmgren said. "That responsibility goes to the courts."
The police investigation was conducted the same way as if the shooter was a 30-year-old, Holmgren said. "Whether this person is of elderly age, that does not have an impact on the investigation," he said.
UC Berkeley law Professor Franklin Zimring said the law is the same no matter how old the defendant. Zimring said elderly people accused of killings are more typically involved in murder-suicides than in a dispute like the one involving Spillman.
"Attacks by the elder against the younger that lead to homicide aren't quite Guinness Book of World Records events, but they are extremely rare," Zimring said.
If Spillman is suffering from diminished mental capacity, Zimring said, "what you can assume is that the mechanism of control - like controlling your temper - can be eroded by the same processes that diminish intellectual capacity."
Despite the apparent tensions between landlord and tenant, neighbors expressed shock that Spillman had resorted to gunfire.
"I just don't believe this," said Diane Cruz-Williams, 59, who lives around the corner. "I mean, it's so hard for me to believe that Frank pulled the gun and shot his landlord."
Cruz-Williams said Spillman had been upset by the recent deaths of three or four of his chickens. "He said the landlord poisoned them somehow, but how do I know that?" she asked.
Villegas said Spillman was a kind man who checked in on Villegas' father when he suffered a stroke. Last week, Spillman gave a homeless man $100, he said.
Thursday night's killing, he said, is "just something you don't think is going to happen."
