The Santa Clara County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s office this
morning identified Marcelino Cardenas Valencia as the 75-year-old
man who died Sunday after being beaten on the head with a baseball
bat in a home invasion.
The Santa Clara County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s office this morning identified Marcelino Cardenas Valencia as the 75-year-old man who died Sunday after being beaten on the head with a baseball bat in a home invasion.
Valencia died at Regional Medical Center of San Jose on Sunday after being severely beaten two weeks ago, police said.
The coroner’s office conducted an autopsy on the victim Monday, Sgt. Wes Stanford said.
Sgt. Jim Gillio, who identified the man only as Marcelino Cardenas, said this morning that additional information about the case was not being released. Gillio was not sure whether police or the coroner’s office had notified the next of kin about the incident, but he said it was safe to assume that next of kin had been notified on Tuesday.
Public records searches indicated that the victim had been identified with the last name of both Valencia and Cardenas in the past.
Valencia and a 46-year-old man were beaten about 10:15 p.m. April 13 by at least one man at the 75-year-old’s residence at the Plum Tree West Apartments complex, 1055 Montebello Drive, police and neighbors said. The suspect spoke in Spanish to the victims and no one else was in the home at the time of the attack, police said.
When police arrived at the residence, after receiving a call of a disturbance, they found the older man lying on a couch in the living room of his home with severe head injuries, police said. The younger man was lying in the kitchen with major injuries to his legs, police said.
Stanford believed that the older victim lived alone. It was unclear what the relationship was between the 75-year-old and the 46-year-old, he said.
Police have yet to determine a motive for the crime, although Stanford said they were checking on a few leads. Police believe that the victims were targeted, but would not provide further details about the reasons for that assessment.
The 75-year-old man’s death is the first homicide in Gilroy this year. However, the nature of the investigation has not changed that much as a result of his death.
“You could argue that it was an attempted homicide (before the man’s death) with the extent of the injuries,” Stanford said.
Although police did not have a chance to talk to the 75-year-old man, they have been able to interview the 46-year-old man, who was released from the hospital after staying there a couple of days, Stanford said.
Police do not know if the victims knew their attacker. The suspect’s face was obscured during the attack, police say. It was unclear whether police planned to try to create a composite sketch, Stanford said. The situation is complicated by the fact that police were not able to interview the victims immediately after the incident, he said.
It is not apparent how the attacker got into the home or if anything was stolen, police have said. There is no evidence that the suspect forced his way into the apartment, they said.
A woman who lives in the Plum Tree West complex said Wednesday that she recalled Valencia for his kindness, although she did not know him well. She would not give her name because of fear of retribution from the suspects.
“He was very popular,” she said of Valencia. “He had a nice side to his personality.”
She recalled one time when Valencia offered his chair to another woman, while he sat on the ground.
Many people in the apartment complex fear for the safety since the incident occurred despite the belief that Valencia was specifically targeted, the woman said.
“We are quite terrified of those people in here,” she said.
The woman heard that the suspects wore masks at the time of the assault and that residents overheard the victims screaming for help from police.
“My opinion is that he got himself into something that he didn’t know would be that bad,” the woman said. “Sometimes people make mistakes about who they associate with.”
A sign on the front door of Plum Tree West this week stated that the apartment complex was private property and that no members of the media were allowed inside. The apartments open onto the main hallways and do not have patios or entrances that open up directly outdoors. A woman inside the complex’s manager’s office said she had no comment on Valencia’s death and threatened to call police on anyone on the property.
A Plum Tree West resident, who stood outside the complex Monday and would not give her name, said she did not know Valencia well but stressed that he did not deserve to die in such a matter.
“I don’t know what this world is coming to,” she said, shaking her head.
Anyone with information can call Detective Stan Devlin at 846-0335.
