SAN JOSE — A man arrested in connection with a deadly weekend shooting has been released after prosecutors declined to charge him criminally, a decision based largely on the man’s claim he was defending a relative being beaten up by a group of men in front of his home, authorities said.
The shooting was reported around 11:25 p.m. the night of Oct. 29 at a home near Melbourne Boulevard and Kaufmann Court, off McLaughlin Avenue.
Authorities say four men went to the home looking for a man living there, and when that resident came out, the men started to assault him. At some point during the assault, a relative of the resident emerged from the home with a gun and opened fire on the group.
Two men were hit, and both were rushed to the hospital, where one of them died. The name of the deceased man has not been publicly released pending his formal identification and notification of his next of kin by the Santa Clara County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s Office.
The man who opened fire was arrested that night. On Friday, the county district attorney’s office confirmed that it decided not to charge the man because of a credible self-defense claim. Officials added, however, that the office could revisit the case if additional evidence or information surfaces.
The profile of the shooting was elevated further into the public sphere when it was cited by San Jose police in an internal bulletin as a factor for why police could not respond to a disturbance call about three miles away that escalated into another deadly shooting.
Both police and the San Jose Police Officers’ Association contended that the patrol response to the shooting near Melbourne and Kaufmann, as well as other emergency calls, left the department unable to respond to a music disturbance involving a house party that same night on Madera Avenue, about three miles north.
About 90 minutes later, a shooting occurred at the Madera Avenue house party, resulting in the death of 19-year-old Daniel Guizar Arredondo of San Jose.
The surfacing of the bulletin led to the union arguing that the resources devoted to the earlier shooting, combined with short staffing, deprived police of the opportunity to respond sooner to the house party and potentially prevent the shooting that unfolded there. But the police department pushed back at that assertion, acknowledging staffing challenges but also contending that the intial call to Madera Avenue was solely a music disturbance report, and might not have gotten an immediate response even if patrols weren’t already occupied.
The two weekend homicides were the city’s 31st and 32nd homicides of the year investigated by SJPD. The department investigated 31 homicides in all of 2021, a tally that does not include the nine people killed in the VTA mass shooting, which was investigated by the sheriff’s office.
Source: www.mercurynews.com