MARTINEZ — After walking gingerly to the witness stand Friday, an Antioch woman described barely surviving nearly a dozen gunshot wounds last year when she was seven months pregnant.
The woman was shot moments after an assailant gunned down the father of her unborn child, 32-year-old Alvin “Archie” Crane, outside an Antioch apartment complex. The woman sustained 10 gunshot wounds, but both her and her unborn son survived.
Her story came out during the preliminary hearing for Felton Clifton Jr., 29, and Kelly Corbitt, 43, both charged with murdering Crane and attempting to murder the woman, who this newspaper is not naming. Next week, a judge is expected to rule whether there is enough evidence to order Clifton and Corbitt to stand trial.
The motive was alluded to during witness testimony Friday morning; weeks before the February 2018 shooting, Corbitt and Clifton allegedly showed up at an Arco gas station in Concord where the woman worked, and Corbitt angrily accused the woman of breaking into her home.
The day of the shooting, Feb. 21, Crane and his pregnant girlfriend spent the day together. They were on their way to Crane’s grandmother when, around 8 p.m., they stopped by the 900 block of West Third Street so that Crane could urinate, according to witness testimony. His girlfriend testified she waited in the car.
That’s when a gunman — who Crane’s girlfriend identified as Clifton — appeared out of nowhere and began shooting. She testified that Clifton shot Crane several times before she had a chance to react, and then she “went black.”
“I remember looking down, seeing me and Alvin dead in the car, then I just woke up,” she testified. The next thing she remembers is, “hearing a fuzz sound, maybe blood coming out.”
The woman said to this day she doesn’t know how many bullets struck her, but authorities said she suffered 10 gunshot wounds. She was taken to a hospital and pulled through, though police said at the time she barely escaped death.
Initially, the woman testified, she told police she couldn’t identify the shooter, but that wasn’t true.
“From the beginning, I knew it was (Clifton),” she testified. She said she was reluctant to tell the truth at first because, “I’m a female, he’s a male and I was scared for my life.”
Witness testimony in the preliminary hearing is set to continue next week. If either or both defendants are held to answer, a trial date will be set.