A year after a brutal home invasion nearly took his life, local
developer Chris Cote has been retelling his bloody ordeal in
graphic detail to city officials in an effort to keep an illegal,
barbed wire fence towering around his home, police and city staff
said.
A year after a brutal home invasion nearly took his life, local developer Chris Cote has been retelling his bloody ordeal in graphic detail to city officials in an effort to keep an illegal, barbed wire fence towering around his home, police and city staff said.
Since March, Code Enforcement Officer Scott Barron has asked Cote to remove the fence which violates residential zoning codes because of its size and intensity.
The intimidating fortress is a departure from the hilly neighborhood’s natural aesthetic and an eyesore for neighbors, including garlic king Don Christopher and other residents who would not comment.
Cote, who also would not comment, never secured a permit back in September when he erected the barrier, off Welburn Avenue near Santa Teresa Boulevard, and Barron said he has since received “multiple” complaints from one unnamed person.
Before the city places a lien on Cote’s property, fines him or sends workers out to dismember the fence, he has the option to pay $3,500 for a staff-level review with an opportunity for a Planning Commission appeal, Barron said. Cote argued vegetation will soon cover his fence, erasing the aesthetic problems, and he also said his barricade is no worse than a shorter, city owned barbed wire fence next to his property. That fence protects a reservoir in a public facilities zone that allows such barriers, Barron said.
Cote, who has offered a $20,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of the main suspect in his home invasion, claimed he cannot pay the fee for the review.
He said he owed $570,000 in medical bills and was battling an ongoing $1 million lawsuit for allegedly stiffing subcontractors on a housing project. These burdens should excuse him from jumping through hoops, he said.
“That violation of my civil rights will allow me to be murdered,” Cote wrote in an e-mail to Barron earlier this month in which he also described his home’s security cameras, flood lights and alarm system. “I only built the fence to protect my family while the criminals that tortured me with hammers and 2x4s are still allowed to walk free.”
At least three unknown men broke into Cote’s home just after 2 a.m. June 10, 2008, bound his feet and ankles with duct tape while he slept, and then pummeled him for 20 minutes.
“I was left for dead with massive head injuries, a displaced and removed eyeball, and shattered limbs. I escaped my home, climbed an eight-foot fence and drug myself 150 feet with shattered legs and multiple compound fractures bleeding profusely until I reached my neighbors to seek help for my child,” Cote wrote to Barron. The assault left “blood spray … from my brain wounds (covering) my walls and ceilings … Perhaps I may be granted some leeway by the city now to submit my variance application without fee money I do not have.”
About three months before the attack, the subcontractors who built Cote’s now-foreclosed solar home project at the corner of Hanna Street and Gurries Drive filed a $1 million lawsuit for nonpayment. Subcontractors denied any involvement in the attack, and police said the suspects were not connected with the solar project.
As for a motive, Detective Stanley Devlin said police were still piecing that together while treating the suspect as “a stranger” to Cote.
While Barron said he was sympathetic to Cote’s “very unusual case,” he and planning commissioners also stressed that rules are rules.
“My job is to enforce the rules as they are written and codified, so I’d have to see what kind of a case he could make,” Planning Commissioner Jim Gailey said. “Mr. Cote’s fear of being murdered in his mind might be justified, but how would razor wire stop a sniper or someone who really wants to murder him? It’s a tough issue.”
It was unclear if Planning Commissioner Joan Spencer, who once had a romantic relationship with Cote, was still involved with him or if she would recuse herself if his fence matter came before her. Spencer could not be reached for comment.
Cote’s controversial history in Gilroy began in 1989 when his former bus company cheated the Gilroy Unified School District out of $8,000, according to court documents. Since then, has also been involved with city committees and county commissions and led the effort to pass a local ordinance barring cell towers near schools.
He pointed to these connections in recent letters to city officials as proof of his “essential” role in the community and as reason for an exception to be made to fencing regulation.
In those same letters, though, he also claimed to be the Santa Clara County representative for Assemblymember Anna Caballero (D-San Jose) at the Democratic Central Committee, but a spokesperson for Caballero said she had yet to appoint anyone.
Cote also sent out mass e-mails through the Gilroy Chamber of Commerce’s e-mail list with a picture of one of his alleged attackers that police provided along with the reward offer.
This angered recipients, who were unsure how he got their e-mail addresses, and even Police Chief Denise Turner replied to all the recipients in one of Cote’s recent e-mail chains asking them to not associate his words with the department.
Police also asked Cote to back off after someone tossed a rock onto Cote’s property in March with a note wrapped around it threatening to burn down his home.
The note was allegedly signed by an unnamed Gilroy city employee, but police dismissed the connection and said they have yet to arrest “the person of interest” pictured in the posters.
There is not enough evidence to arrest the suspect because investigators are awaiting crime lab results from the home invasion as well as from the rock and from Cote’s video surveillance of the rock-thrower, Sgt. Jim Gillio said.
“If the district attorney had enough evidence, this guy would be in jail, but they don’t,” he said
