By Henry K. Lee, San Francisco Chronicle

UNION CITY — A teenage boy accused of fatally shooting a recent Union City high school graduate at a party last summer is now facing charges as an adult, records show.

Roberto Moreno, 18, is being held in connection with the June 22 slaying of Biniam Yifru, 17, in Union City, according to Alameda County jail records.

Moreno had originally been charged as a juvenile but was transferred to Santa Rita Jail in Dublin earlier this month. He has been charged with murder, attempted murder, assault with a firearm and weapons violations.

Biniam, an Ethiopian native and a recent graduate of James Logan High School in Union City, had been attending a graduation party for a fellow student at a house owned by an assistant principal at the high school.

Gang members arrived uninvited, prompting a bloody melee that injured five people, police said. Two were shot, including Biniam, whom officers found lying on a front walkway with a wound to the head. Paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene.

Moreno was arrested two days after the shooting. He was four months shy of his 18th birthday at the time of the slaying.

Biniam had registered for classes at Ohlone College in Fremont, secured a job as a law clerk, and gotten a haircut for the first time in two years shortly before he was killed, friends said.

Five months before the shooting, Biniam’s 24-year-old brother, Travis Yifru, died from diabetes, family members said.
————————-
E-mail Henry K. Lee at [email protected].