GILROY
– While driving to the firing range for some target practice
Saturday, two city police officers recognized an attempted murder
suspect in the back seat of a car sharing the road with them.
GILROY – While driving to the firing range for some target practice Saturday, two city police officers recognized an attempted murder suspect in the back seat of a car sharing the road with them.
Cpl. Robert Locke-Paddon and Investigator Jim Gillio promptly pulled the other car over and arrested 20-year-old Santiago Medina Jr. on a felony warrant just before 5 p.m. on Luchessa Avenue at Monterey Street.
Medina was wanted for his involvement in one of three gang-related shootings on Dec. 28. He is the fourth man police have arrested in the case, but more than one suspect is still at large, according to Deputy District Attorney Stuart Scott, who handles all South County gang cases.
Medina’s warrant was for attempted murder and firing a gun into an occupied vehicle.
Medina also had a butterfly knife with him at the time of arrest which earned him another felony charge, according to police Sgt. Kurt Ashley. Butterfly knives fall under the category of switchblades in the state Penal Code.
Medina was arraigned in court Monday and is being held without bail in the Santa Clara County Jail.
Scott said Medina belongs to a Norteño gang and was one of several Norteños, in two cars on U.S. Highway 101, who fired shots at a car containing suspected members of a rival Sureño gang. It was believed to be a retaliation for the first shooting of the day, a drive-by against a Norteño car on Church Street.
Scott said Medina was in the same car as Eloy Beltran, 21, an alleged Norteño arrested on Jan. 10. No one has yet been arrested from the other Norteño car. The driver of the victim vehicle was wounded.
Police are also looking for the perpetrator of the second shooting that day. Shortly after the first drive-by, witnesses reported seeing an unknown man shoot from a curb at the Sureño vehicle containing the original gunmen.
Within two weeks of the shootings, the Anti-Crime Team – a city police gang-specialty unit to which both Locke-Paddon and Gillio belong – had three men in jail on attempted murder charges.
Within three days, on New Year’s Eve, ACT officers arrested Israel Hernandez, who has since turned 19. On Jan. 7, they arrested his friend Juan Hernandez, 21. Israel Hernandez confessed to firing several shots at a passing car on Church Street, at Second Street, with Juan driving. The bullets missed their supposed target – a rival gang member – and hit two nearby houses.
Police suspect both Hernandezes are members of a Sureño sect – the East Eighth Street gang, based on doodles found in a notebook in Israel’s bedroom.
There has been an increase in gang activity since late 2003, ACT Sgt. Greg Flippo told the Gilroy Gang Task Force on Feb. 3. Prison gangs are restructuring and are especially targeting Santa Clara and Monterey counties, but police have had some success in suppressing their progress, Flippo reported.
Nevertheless, major conflicts are few. Scott confirmed that the Dec. 28 shootings were the first serious gang clash since a stabbing in April 2003 on East Eighth Street, for which Gerardo Ortiz Magaña, 20, a reputed Sureño, is expected to stand trial in April.
Gang activity, once prevalent in Gilroy, has dropped massively since the ACT debuted a decade or so ago.
