Years after release in double murder case, East Bay man charged with raping stranger on Concord trail
CONCORD — A 40-year-old man has been charged with raping and robbing a woman on a trail near the North Concord BART station, a crime that authorities describe as an attack on a randomly-selected victim.
Larry Ridge Jr. was charged Wednesday with one count of forcible rape, one count of assault with intent to commit rape and one count of robbing the woman of her cellphone, records show. He is set to be arraigned Thursday afternoon before Judge Patricia Scanlon.
Ridge was serving a life sentence for two second-degree murder convictions from 2004 until 2019, when a change in California law led to his release from jail. Those convictions stemmed from a quadruple shooting in Oakland that occurred — coincidentally — exactly 20 years to the day before Ridge allegedly raped the woman in Concord.
On April 8, 2004, Ridge’s brother, 46-year-old Donald Jones, fired a rifle from a van containing Ridge, 28-year-old Ray Gilbert and one other person, at a group of people on 29th Street in West Oakland. A 15-year-old boy, Thomas Simpson, was killed and another teen was injured, prompting someone in the group to return fire, killing Gilbert and injuring Ridge, court records show.
Police said at the time that the motive appeared to be related to a rivalry between gangs from Oakland’s Milton Street and Ghost Town neighborhood.
Both Jones and Ridge were charged with murder and went on trial. Ridge was convicted of murder and attempted murder, but in 2019 a judge found he qualified for a reduced sentence under SB 1437, a state law implemented that same year restricting when prosecutors can charge someone with murder for participating in an underlying felony, when the defendant didn’t personally kill anyone.
Ridge was released from prison in November 2019. Jones remains incarcerated in Corcoran, where he’s serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
Authorities say that Ridge was arrested on suspicion of sexual battery in San Mateo County earlier this year, and Contra Costa court records indicate he served a 120-day jail sentence for a parole violation in 2022.
In the Concord sexual assault, authorities allege that Ridge attacked the woman after she exited the BART station and walked onto a trail a short distance away. The two did not know one another, authorities said. Ridge is being held in county jail, with his bail set at $1.25 million.