GILROY
– Gilroy Police have arrested a 21-year-old Gilroy man on
suspicion of murdering a 26-year-old Gilroy resident found stabbed
more than 20 times Thursday night on the kitchen floor of the
Eigleberry Street apartment where he lived.
GILROY – Gilroy Police have arrested a 21-year-old Gilroy man on suspicion of murdering a 26-year-old Gilroy resident found stabbed more than 20 times Thursday night on the kitchen floor of the Eigleberry Street apartment where he lived.
Police said they arrested Jesse Eduardo Gil at 9:43 p.m. Friday after finding him hiding in a residence at an undisclosed location in Gilroy. He is currently being held at the Santa Clara County Main Jail in downtown San Jose.
No formal charges had been filed as of Monday morning. GPD Capt. Debbie Moore said Gil could be arraigned as early as today pending a review by the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office. A District Attorney’s spokeswoman said Monday that her office had not yet received the case.
Police did not release much information on a possible motive or the nature of the relationship between Gil and the victim, who coroner’s officials identified Monday as 26-year-old Wilfredo Coreas.
Police said Gil should be considered armed and dangerous when they released a sketch of him on Friday and advised anyone with information of his whereabouts not to approach him. A GPD sergeant said late last week that investigators don’t think the crime was gang-related.
“We’re still following up on the investigation,” Moore said.
According to the GPD, police responded to the apartment complex at 7190 Eigleberry St. near Eighth Street at 11:30 p.m. Thursday after receiving a 911 call from the victim’s roommate, who reported returning home from an outing and finding Coreas lying unconscious and bleeding on the kitchen floor of their shared apartment.
Investigators said Coreas was pronounced dead at the scene after emergency crews responded and found he had been stabbed more than 20 times, apparently with a knife-like weapon. Police believe they have recovered the murder weapon and said there were apparently some eyewitnesses to the crime.
However, several residents in the two-story, courtyard-style apartment complex remained mum on the stabbing. Most said they did not speak English, and those that did said they did not know details about the crime.
One area resident said violence and criminal activity are frequent in the apartment complex and the neighborhood around it and often are gang-related. The resident, who wished to remain unnamed for fear of retribution, heard two men yelling at the complex Thursday night.
“I heard a lot of screaming, but I didn’t know what happened,” the resident said Friday. “They were screaming at each other.”
Neighborhood residents said there has been much violence in the past in the immediate area along Eigleberry between Seventh and Ninth, including a recent beating incident with a golf club. The area around the Eighth Street intersection is especially active, they said.
“There’s a lot of violence at that corner,” one said. “It’s like a boxing ring.”
