The district attorney’s office and lawyers representing the two
young men police said took part in a gang-related drive-by shooting
last month questioned police officers and a family member in court
this morning.
The district attorney’s office and lawyers representing the two young men police said took part in a gang-related drive-by shooting last month questioned police officers and a family member in court this morning.
Judge Charles Hayden presided over the preliminary examination at the Santa Clara County Superior Court in San Martin, where Gilroy police officers clarified and reiterated portions of their reports from a Nov. 13 shooting. That day, officers arrested Israel Juarez, 18, for allegedly firing a .380 caliber handgun multiple times at a man in an SUV near the intersection of IOOF Avenue and Monterey Street.
In their reports, police officers identified Juarez as a known Norteño gang member who took up arms to avenge the death of Larry Martinez Jr., a suspected Norteño gang member who three unknown suspects gunned down two days prior. Police claim Juarez shot from the passenger seat of a black Honda Civic driven by the second suspect, Joshua Williams, 18.
The mothers of both defendants attended court Wednesday, but Williams’ mother, Ida Williams, said she was still beside herself that all this was happening given her son’s straight-and-narrow lifestyle.
“I am still absolutely beside myself. Ever since we came here, it’s been nothing but misery,” Ida Williams said during a lunch break Monday. She held back tears as she recounted her decision to move to Gilroy from Santa Cruz last year after her husband passed away from a terminal disease. She and her son moved to Hadley Court to be within earshot of her parents, who are also ill, but Ida Williams said she did not realize the area had a reputation for criminal activity, or that police and school officials had penchants for racial profiling, until her son started having troubles here.
“We moved here to start a new life, but it’s been miserable – nothing but profiling,” Ida Williams said, pointing to Gilroy High School officials who told her son that he could not wear a crucifix with his father’s ashes or sport red and blue colors because of his imposing physical stature. Ida Williams then enrolled him at Mt. Madonna.
Another time, she said police pulled her son over three times within one hour while he wore a NorCal baseball cap and rode his motorcycle to and from the gym.
“They said they wanted to get to know the new kid on the block,” Ida Williams said. “We’re from Santa Cruz. Everybody wears NorCal in Santa Cruz – even the surfers. For God’s sake, I have a NorCal beanie.”
Then police charged Joshua Williams for assault and possession of a concealed weapon after he tossed an empty beer can toward an officer in a park while carrying a small knife. The court put him on probation afterward, and he has since been attending drug programs and speaking with a psychologist at Community Solutions, Ida Williams said. But when she heard sirens outside her house Nov. 13 – which was also her deceased husband’s birthday – Ida Williams said she feared the worst.
“I was making spaghetti for my parents, and Joshua had just gone outside, and when I heard the sirens, I ran out my front door and then a cop pointed a gun at me and yelled to return inside,” Ida Williams said.
Outside, police detained the two suspects and Juarez’s older brother, Gabriel Juarez, who was released soon thereafter due to lack of evidence. But police did find a glass pipe with white, meth-like residue in Israel Juarez’s front pocket and a red bandanna hanging from Williams’ back left pocket. The two could serve 12 years to life if convicted of shooting at an inhabited dwelling and conducting a drive-by in association with a gang.
After their arrests, police searched the Juarez household, which sits across the street from the Williams’ home. Inside, they found a photo of Martinez and a box with a hole in the top and a message asking for donations to help pay for the funeral. Police searched Ida Williams’ home six days later after smashing in the door and throwing her to the ground, she said.
Deputy District Attorney Troy Benson harped on the box during the preliminary examination Wednesday, pointing to it as evidence, among other things, that the alleged shooting was vengeance for Martinez’s gang-related death. The box was one of about four that Williams’ friend and Juarez’s 16-year-old sister, Ariana Juarez, said she was using to collect donations along with her mother, Evelia Garcia, who owns the home and gave police permission to search it that day.
“The allegation is that they did this crime for the benefit of a criminal street gang. Martinez was a member. The box was in the house,” Benson said.
The judge denied several objections from Juarez’s private attorney, James Leininger, who said Ariana Juarez came to court to answer questions about the Nov. 13 incident, not Martinez’s death. Still, she told Benson she was not a member of a gang and said the same of the defendants. She also said she never told her mother, Evelia Garcia, that Williams had driven the Honda last. Officer Jason Kadluboski, who told the court he speaks “very little” Spanish, reported overhearing Ariana Juarez telling her Spanish-speaking mother that Williams was driving last. He said he confirmed this with Garcia in English, but on Wednesday Ariana Juarez said she only told her mother she did not know who had been driving.
Williams’ attorney, Deputy Public Defender Ralph Benitez, also pointed out how Kadluboski never asked Garcia if she saw Williams driving, how many times the car had moved that day or whether anyone else had driven it.
Just 20 minutes before the shooting, Gilroy Police Officer Michael Bolton stopped outside the Juarez brothers’ mother’s house on the 500 block of Hadley Court in east Gilroy during routine patrol because Gabriel Juarez’s black Honda was parked illegally facing traffic. Bolton left after a brief conversation with the brothers who were hanging around the car.
When he heard reports of shots fired and the initial descriptions of the suspects’ car – a Honda with a spoiler and loud exhaust system – Bolton dashed back to the house, but Gabriel Juarez’s vehicle was gone. It was still gone an hour later, but another officer noticed it outside the house about 3 p.m., parked in the wrong direction again. This time, though, a spent .380 caliber bullet casing sat in plain view at the base of one windshield wiper.
After his arrest, Gabriel Juarez told police that he drove nearby to buy some marijuana after Bolton left. When he returned shortly thereafter, his younger brother and Williams asked to smoke with him, but Gabriel said only if they washed his car. The two then took his car, and Gabriel Juarez went inside to tend to his 9-month-old child, according to police. When he came outside about 3 p.m., he said cops greeted him.
Israel Juarez denied all this in front of his brother and police and also claimed to know nothing about the shooting. Ida Williams said her son had been with her immediately before police showed up to make arrests. Her son declined to talk to officers after his arrest, except to say he knew nothing of the shooting “because I was not involved.”
“Josh had never been in trouble until we came to this town,” Ida Williams said. “I can’t believe this.”
