Three gang members attacked and robbed a Watsonville man early
Monday morning as he left an oft-troubled downtown bar, police
said.
Three gang members attacked and robbed a Watsonville man early Monday morning as he left an oft-troubled downtown bar, police said.
Luis Serrano, 20, and two male juveniles attempted to run over and then physically attacked a 36-year-old man about 2:15 a.m. near the corner of Monterey and Martin streets, police and witnesses said. The incident occurred in a city parking lot just north of the El Rio Nilo bar and nightclub, where the victim had been drinking, police and witnesses said.
“I heard the car come peeling in, and I looked out there, and people were running away as the car tried to run them over,” said Bob Tapella, the owner of Garlic City Billiards.
Tapella witnessed the attack from his apartment window, which looks out over the parking lot. Tapella said he and the owner of Rio Nilo saw the suspects, who included a 14-year-old male and a 17-year-old male, cruising up and down Monterey Street “looking for a fight” immediately before the bar closed. They found one with the victim, whom they tried to rob before one of the suspects slashed him with “a big knife,” according to police and Tapella.
“He was bleeding pretty good from his hand,” Tapella said of the unnamed victim, who sustained superficial injuries and declined medical care, according to police.
The assailants fled the scene before police arrived but witnesses offered descriptions that led officers to the suspects’ vehicle near Seventh and Dowdy streets, police said. Officers charged the suspects, who live in Gilroy and admitted to being Sureño gang members, with robbery and assault with a deadly weapon after witnesses confirmed their identities, police said.
The area and nightclub are not new to violence. Police regularly arrest people for public intoxication, being under the influence of a controlled substance, and fighting in public outside the nightclub, according to arrest logs.
Back in the early morning of March 16, 2008, Tapella witnessed a man stab and kill 26-year-old Juan DeDios Arvizu Cabrera outside Rio Nilo. The district attorney charged Osiris Quintero Munoz, 28, with murder and will appear in court later this week. Munoz also stabbed Cabrera’s brother, though that man lived, police said.
The killing only reinforced Tapella’s opinion that more police need to patrol the downtown area, especially after the bars let out, he said. Less than a year before Cabrera’s killing, someone stabbed and killed 56-year-old Juan Lugo in an alley behind La Colonia Latina, located on Monterey Street between Eighth and Old Gilroy streets, police said. Police do not have any suspects in that killing.
“I think the police need to do a lot more patrolling down here. They say the department’s been cut back and there aren’t enough officers to do that, but when these clubs let out, there’s a lot of drunk people, and we need more help down here,” Tapella said.
With one graveyard officer still on leave after firing his weapon to stop a car from allegedly running over a fellow officer, the police department is struggling to maintain above-minimum staffing levels, police said. There has been talk of installing a sub-station downtown – four blocks east of the police station – and beefing up patrols, but budget issues have hampered these efforts.
