OAKLAND, Calif. -- An Alameda County jury Tuesday convicted Christopher Hollis of voluntary manslaughter for the death of 19-year-old Meleia Willis-Starbuck, his high school friend who he mistakenly shot on a Berkeley street corner in July 2005.

The jury came back with the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, although the prosecution was seeking a murder conviction. The jury also found Hollis guilty of assault with a firearm.

In their closing arguments, Deputy District Attorney Elgin Lowe and defense attorney Greg Syren agreed that Hollis fired at least several shots from a .30-caliber gun toward a crowd in an incident near the intersection of College Avenue and Dwight Way in Berkeley about 2 a.m. on July 17, 2005.

One of those bullets killed Willis-Starbuck, who had recently completed her freshman year at Dartmouth College and had returned to Berkeley to take a summer job providing social and health services to low-income women.

Lowe and Syren also agreed that Hollis, who attended Berkeley High with Willis-Starbuck, and two other men responded to her call for help after she and several women friends got into a confrontation with seven to 10 University of California, Berkeley football players who at first tried to pick up the women and then insulted them after their advances were rebuffed.

But they strongly disagreed about the charge for which Hollis should be convicted.

Lowe told jurors that they should convict Hollis of either first- or second-degree murder because by firing four or five shots he acted with conscious disregard for human life and he had time to reflect on his actions before aiming again and pulling the trigger for his final shots.

But Syren said Hollis should only be convicted of voluntary manslaughter because he "had no intent to kill anyone" and was only trying to disperse the crowd of people who were gathered on the street that morning.

Lowe alleged that Hollis, an aspiring rap singer, was trying to burnish his reputation as a tough guy by firing his gun, noting that when Hollis was arrested after two months on the run that he never saw Willis-Starbuck and his sole purpose was to scare the Cal football players.

But Syren said, "This is not a murder case. It is a case that involves someone who was seeking to protect their friend who did something that was rash and who did something that was immature."