Sacramento, California – The District Attorney’s Office of Sacramento County has voiced concerns after a dangerous criminal was released on parole. Kyle Frank, who was serving a 90-year sentence, was paroled after only 14 years. In 2011, Frank was found guilty of eight counts of attempted murder following a series of shootings on the highway during the summer of 2009. He targeted vehicles on four different occasions while intoxicated by alcohol and cocaine. However, on April 10, the parole board of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation decided to grant him parole.
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Sacramento County District Attorney Thien Ho argued that considering the severe violence and the impact on the victims, it was inappropriate to release Frank after he had completed just 15% of his sentence.
On August 22, 2009, Paul Adcock was the first person attacked by Frank. Adcock was shocked that someone would actually shoot at cars on the freeway. He remembered seeing Frank while driving; Frank was in the middle lane, making obscene gestures and shouting racial slurs at him. Adcock, who was in a sports car, thought he could easily outrun Frank, so he decided to speed away.
“Next thing I know, I hear bullets hitting my car,” he said.
Among the victims were families with young children, and all victims belonged to minority groups.
“I was thinking that this was an incredibly dangerous individual that harbored some type of racial animus towards people of African American or Hispanic descent,” said Assistant Chief Deputy District Attorney Rochelle Beardsley, who worked the case.
Beardsley recalled how the victims found some comfort knowing that the man who attempted to take their lives would be imprisoned and unable to harm them or anyone else, reflecting on the reassurance provided by Frank’s initial 90-year sentence.
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ABC10 attempted to contact the parole board for a statement regarding their decision to grant parole to Frank, but there has been no response from the department. In response to the parole decision, the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office has appealed to Governor Gavin Newsom, urging him to direct the full parole board to review and perhaps reverse the decision to release Frank.