GILROY
– Eighteen-year-old Israel Hernandez told police he began the
day by going to Sunday Mass. Later, he would try to shoot and kill
a rival gang member. Now he’s in county jail facing charges that
could mean life in prison.
GILROY – Eighteen-year-old Israel Hernandez told police he began the day by going to Sunday Mass. Later, he would try to shoot and kill a rival gang member. Now he’s in county jail facing charges that could mean life in prison.
Hernandez, a suspected member of the Sureño gang, met several friends in the parking lot of St. Mary Church after the 9:45 a.m. service on Dec. 28, he told an officer with the Gilroy Police Department’s gang-specialist Anti-Crime Team in an interview on New Year’s Eve, the day he was arrested. The police account is on file at the Superior Court, where Hernandez is scheduled to enter a plea Friday.
The friends decided to go to Hernandez’s nearby apartment at 8170 Church St., he told police. They went to Budget Liquor at Church and Wayland to buy beer at least twice – Heineken 12-packs each time, according to court records.
Hernandez originally told police the friends spent the whole day drinking beer at his apartment complex, but he changed his story as the officer revealed the evidence police had against him. After the officer told Hernandez his fingerprints were found on a Heineken bottle discovered at Sixth and Eigleberry streets, he admitted they had driven around in a dark-colored Ford Taurus his friend had brought (later found to be the friend’s mother’s car). He also admitted he had thrown the bottle at a man who had insulted him at Sixth and Eigleberry streets. He still denied any involvement in a shooting, even when police told him they had his fingerprints on a .38-caliber revolver found under the Taurus’ front seat.
But when the officer told Hernandez a witness saw Hernandez fire several shots through the Taurus’ window at another car, Hernandez “paused for a second and lowered his head,” the officer reported. Then he confessed.
He was riding in the back seat of the Taurus, with two friends in the front seats, Hernandez told police. As they drove south on Church Street that afternoon, they saw a light brown Buick Cutlass Supreme coming toward them, driven by a man whom Hernandez recognized and whom he thinks is a member of the Norteño gang, the Sureños’ rival.
As the cars passed each other, Hernandez said he used a “38” (.38-caliber) handgun to fire three or four shots at the Cutlass from the Taurus’ right rear window, tilting his wrist to shoot across the Taurus’ rooftop. One bullet went through a front window of a house on the 7800 block of Church Street and lodged in an interior wall, police reported. A second ricocheted off the same house’s outside wall and was found on the porch. A third went through the window of another house.
After the shots, Hernandez and his friends turned right on Third Street and right again on Rosanna Street. They saw the Cutlass again. Sometime shortly afterward, Hernandez said, one or more occupants of the Cutlass fired back. Police questioned this, as several witnesses said they saw a man in a dark hooded sweatshirt fire shots at the Taurus, which was following the Cutlass, from the side of Wayland Lane at Sherwood Drive. Hernandez said he couldn’t be sure the shots came from the Cutlass.
Hernandez said he and his friends then returned to his apartment. Three police officers arrived there shortly afterward and detained the three men, plus a fourth, at gunpoint, having learned the Taurus’ location from a witness. The men denied involvement in the shooting, and the officers released them – but towed the Taurus as evidence.
On Wayland Lane, police also detained a man suspected of firing the shots at the Taurus, but they released him as well.
A police investigation is continuing into the Wayland Lane shooting and another later that day on U.S. 101. Hernandez denied he was present but said his friends were shot at there. The men were riding in a white Ford Crown Victoria driven by an acquaintance of Hernandez’s. Two cars approached the Crown Victoria on southbound 101, and their occupants fired multiple rounds into it near the Monterey Street exit, multiple sources told police.
The Crown Victoria’s driver received a minor wound in his arm and got a ride to Saint Louise Regional Hospital, one of the passengers in the car told police. Hospital officials notified police.
Both Hernandez and a witness who was at the Church Street crime scene said Hernandez was the only one in the Taurus to fire any shots, but police and the court have also issued a warrant for the arrest of one of Hernandez’s friends who was reportedly driving the Taurus – Juan Jose Hernandez, 21, of 7880 Eigleberry St. Juan Hernandez’s charges are the same as Israel’s: attempted murder for the benefit of a street gang, which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison, and shooting at an occupied motor vehicle for the benefit of a street gang, a felony for which each man could serve as many as 11 years in prison. The bail amount in Juan Hernandez’s warrant is $1 million.
After a witness named Israel Hernandez as the Church Street gunman, police returned to the suspect’s home at 3:20 p.m. Dec. 31 and arrested him. In his bedroom, they found what they suspect are Sureño gang emblems in a notebook, on a compact disc and on some miniature toy men. Israel Hernandez was on probation at the time. He gave the above-mentioned interview to police later that day.
Israel Hernandez is in county jail in San Jose. His bail is $1 million, up from $250,000 before his arraignment Monday.
