Sacramento police arrest suspect in slaying of popular musician, DJ Gio
Detectives and SWAT officers served search warrants on Thursday at two Bay Area homes and arrested a suspect in a shooting that killed two men during an apparent attempted robbery two months ago in Sacramento.
Nigel Kahan Robinson, 22, was arrested on suspicion of homicide and booked at the Sacramento County Jail. He was being held without bail. He is scheduled to make his first Sacramento Superior Court appearance Friday afternoon, according to jail records.
The shooting that killed Giovanni Pizano, 31, of Sacramento and Vernon Mulder III, 30, of Vallejo, occurred shortly before 3:30 a.m. on April 10 in the 2500 block of Amelia Earhart Avenue in the Natomas Crossing neighborhood.
Officers arrived at the scene and found the men with life-threatening gunshot wounds. Sacramento Fire Department medics later pronounced them dead at the scene.
Detectives continued to investigate the homicide and identified Robinson as a suspect in the fatal shooting, the Sacramento Police Department announced in an updated news release Thursday.
The detectives and members of the Sacramento police SWAT team served search warrants at two homes in Vallejo and found Robinson in one of the homes.
The Sacramento Police Department has said that detectives “identified that this homicide centered around a robbery attempt.” Pizano’s mother, Anita Razo, has told The Sacramento Bee that her son was killed by a pair of men attempting to rob him of his diamond jewelry, and that one of the two alleged robbers was also shot dead in the encounter.
Mulder, a Vallejo resident, has a criminal record in Solano County Superior Court that dates back to 2010. The nature of criminal charges are no longer included in online court records, but a news story by the Vallejo Times-Herald said Mulder was arrested in December 2017 by Vallejo police on charges related to firearms possession.
Pizano was better known to his fans as DJ Gio. He had been deejaying since age 11, resulting in a successful music career that had allowed him to travel the world. His mother said he planned to buy a nice, big house in the Sacramento area later this year for his whole family to live in.
The Bee’s Michael McGough contributed to this story.
This story was originally published June 16, 2022 at 1:29 PM.
