Crime

Morgan Hill police Wednesday night arrested a man believed to be a suspect in a series of recent burglaries in town, authorities said. Officers were dispatched to the area of Barnell Avenue Wednesday night on a report of a suspicious man in the backyard of a residence, according to a press release from the Morgan Hill Police Department. When officers arrived, witnesses said they saw the man fleeing the area on a bicycle toward Dunne Avenue, police said. Officers soon found the suspect’s discarded bicycle in the yard of a home on Dunne Avenue near Del Monte Avenue. Police established a perimeter around the area, and witnesses led officers to the Dollar Tree store located in a shopping center at the corner of West Dunne Avenue and Monterey Road, the press release said. As police entered the front door of Dollar Tree, the suspect ran out through the rear doors and was tackled by officers as he ran through the Monte Vista Apartments complex, police said. The suspect, later identified as Jaime Alvarado, 33 of Morgan Hill, had multiple warrants for his arrest, police said. He was taken into custody without further incident. Alvarado is also believed to be responsible for a series of recent burglaries in Morgan Hill, though police did not offer further information on those crimes. Alvarado was booked at Santa Clara County Jail on suspicion of burglary and resisting arrest, police said. Police noted that the case would not have been solved, nor the property recovered as quickly as it was, without the help of nearby residents “to get involved and report suspicious activity.” 

A crowd of breakfast diners at the Longhouse Restaurant on Monterey Street wrestled an erratic naked man to the ground to free his infant son from his grasp the morning of Aug. 2, according to Gilroy police.

A motorcyclist crashed into a fire hydrant on the 8700 block of Monterey Road on Sunday afternoon, causing serious injuries to himself. 

A fatal traffic collision Sunday afternoon caused both westbound lanes of Hwy. 152 to close for approximately 40 minutes while emergency crews treated the injured parties, according to an incident report from the California Highway Patrol. The accident happened east of the Santa Clara County line near Los Banos.

Crews from five area fire departments were up all night extinguishing a giant garbage fire at the San Martin Transfer Station Friday, according to authorities. The cause of the fire at the garbage and recycling facility at 14070 Llagas Ave. is undetermined, but investigators do not think it was intentional, according to CalFire Battalion Chief Brandon Leitzke. The blaze burned in a pit of garbage and recyclable materials inside a roughly 5,000-square-foot metal building that is open on two sides to allow heavy equipment to sort through the discarded items for processing, Leitzke said. About 100 tons of garbage burned, but the fire only caused “minimal” damage to the building itself. Crews from CalFire, the South Santa Clara County Fire District and the Morgan Hill, Gilroy and San Jose fire departments worked through the night Friday and into Saturday morning to extinguish the fire, Leitzke said. The fire started just after 7 p.m. Friday. A firefighter injured his wrist while fighting the fire, Leitzke said. That was the only injury resulting from the incident. The San Martin Transfer Station is owned and operated by Recology South Valley. That company’s general manager, Phil Couchee, said they had to close the site to drop-offs from the public for a couple days, but they expect to reopen by Monday afternoon. “The firefighters did an outstanding job to contain (the fire) and manage it,” Couchee said. 

At 7:48 a.m. Thursday, San Jose police responded to a silent alarm at California Check Cashing Store in the 2100 block of Story Road in

In a late night stealth operation, about 25 officers from several local and state law enforcement agencies shut down an illegal gambling venue masquerading as an Internet sweepstakes cafe on First Street in Gilroy Aug. 1, confiscating everything in the store, arresting three people and snapping handcuffs on dozens of others.

Identity theft

Three engines from the Gilroy City Fire Department extinguished a small vegetation fire Wednesday afternoon in the creek near Antonio Del Buono Elementary School.

Here's a roundup of some criminal incidents in Gilroy this week: