Hayward man sentenced to 14 years for sexually assaulting woman as she walked Oakland streets

OAKLAND — A Hayward man has been sentenced to 14 years in state prison for attacking a woman during a random 2022 sexual assault in Oakland, court records show.

Mercedes Dunlap, 34, was sentenced last month after accepting a plea deal that required him to plead no contest to assault with intent to commit a sex crime. In exchange, prosecutors dropped a second sexual assault charge, as well as gun possession and robbery counts, court records show.

According to prosecutors, the woman was walking up Parker Avenue in Oakland when Dunlap came up behind her, pointed a gun at her, and asked her, “Do you want to die?” At a preliminary hearing, she testified that she was “terrified” and “scared for my life.”

“I didn’t know if I would get up from the sidewalk that day,” the woman testified. “I tried to look away, because he was trying to unzip his pants. So I tried to look away and he held me down and I just kept screaming, ‘let me go.’”

During the attack, he touched her private parts. He only fled as she began to “scream frantically,” taking her cellphone with him, prosecutors said in a sentencing memo.

The entire attack was captured by a nearby security camera, making it relatively easy for police to identify him as a suspect. The cellphone was later found in Dunlap’s possession during a search of a family member’s home in San Ramon, police said.

As if all that wasn’t enough, Dunlap’s own mother and sister identified him in a still photo cropped from the surveillance video, police said. Dunlap agreed to take the plea deal just before the case was set for trial, according to court records.

Dunlap remains in Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, pending transfer to the state prison system. The plea deal also requires him to register as a sex offender for life, court records show.