Crime

The killing case of Morgan Hill teen Tara Romero spins a harrowing account of two opposing worlds colliding in terror when a group of young high school classmates celebrating a 15th birthday coincidentally crossed paths at the end of the night with five young men intent on settling a score with a rival street gang.

Here’s your weekly digest of criminal happenings in Gilroy, including a couple drug arrests, fraud and a juvenile committing arson at his school.

Former Santa Clara County Supervisor George Shirakawa, who resigned from his office in March citing his intention to plead guilty to charges of failure to file campaign finances and improper use of his county credit card, was charged Wednesday by the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office for “impersonating someone else’s campaign on a fictional and defamatory political flyer.”

CalFire crews responded to a brush fire Sunday morning in a valley near Harvey Bear Ranch Trail, which is part of Coyote Lake-Harvey Bear Ranch County Park in San Martin.

Police arrested a 39-year-old Morgan Hill man on suspicion of molesting a child family member last week, according to a press release from Morgan Hill Police. 

In the Morgan Hill Police Department’s ongoing undercover “shoulder tap” operation to crack down on adults who might purchase alcohol for those underage, officers arrested a suspect for doing just that last month. 

In yet another bizarre twist in the ongoing attempt to bring five suspects in the 2011 drive-by shooting that killed 14-year-old Tara Romero to trial, the attorney for one of the suspects had to recuse himself from the case Friday because his office is representing a victim of that shooting who is now a suspect in an unrelated violent crime spree that happened earlier this year in San Jose. 

Here are this week's arrests from the Gilroy Police Department arrest log.

The second day of testimony in the preliminary hearing for four of the five suspects accused of killing Morgan Hill teen Tara Romero in a drive-by shooting Nov. 4, 2011 included an emotional recollection of that night’s events by one of the surviving victims of the gunfire.

Christopher High School Principal John Perales is dispelling rumors of wild animals running through the halls and wanton graffiti as a result of a senior prank gone wrong. He concedes that some vandalism did take place on campus around midnight May 16, but adds that rumors floating around the community have blown the incident way out of proportion.