San Jose police shot a person wielding a gun at a downtown restaurant early Sunday morning, about a block from where another person was killed in another shooting.
For much of the morning, several blocks of downtown San Jose were closed as police investigated a sprawling crime scene along the western perimeter of San Jose State University. Still closed in the afternoon were the northbound lanes of South Fourth Street from San Fernando Street to San Salvador Street, as well as the affected block of San Carlos Street near La Victoria Taqueria.
Both shootings happened within about a half-hour of each other near the university’s campus, though San Jose police say that it remains unclear whether the two incidents were connected in any way.
The violence began shortly before 2:45 a.m. when a man was killed on South Fourth Street just north of San Carlos Street in what is the city’s fourth homicide of 2022, according to the San Jose Police Department. No arrests have been announced, and police said early Sunday that they were still investigating what led to the shooting.
At 3:11 a.m., officers investigating that fatal shooting saw and heard people fleeing the nearby La Victoria restaurant a half-block away on San Carlos Street, according to the department’s Twitter page. Multiple people told officers that there was a man inside the restaurant with a gun, police said.
Officers opened fire after a man had pointed a gun at “another involved subject,” the department’s Twitter page said.
That man is expected to survive.
Police had earlier said that the shootings were reported within a minute of each other, but they later clarified that about a half-hour had passed between the incidents.
Miriam Lopez, 30, said she awoke to two loud bangs outside her apartment and looked out her window, down onto the restaurant. The taqueria, just a half-block from the San Jose State University campus, is open until 3 a.m. almost every night.
She saw police officers approaching the eatery with their guns drawn, and people fleeing. She watched as one person who appeared to be injured was loaded into an ambulance and whisked away.
“At first I thought they were fireworks, and then I heard people yelling” in disbelief at what had happened, Lopez said. “It all happened so fast. It was pretty scary.”
Check back for more as the story develops.
Units are currently at two separate scenes within one block of each other.
First scene is a shooting with at least one victim near the intersection E. San Carlos St and S. 4th St.
Second scene involves an Officer involved shooting in the 100 block of E. San Carlos St. pic.twitter.com/JzxEhM30cm
— San José Police Media Relations (@SJPD_PIO) March 27, 2022
Source: www.mercurynews.com