Four San Jose men were arrested Monday night but later released
without charges after an incident on Malaguerra Avenue that may
have been gang related.
Morgan Hill – Four San Jose men were arrested Monday night but later released without charges after an incident on Malaguerra Avenue that may have been gang related.
Richard Armendariz, 23; Jose Torres, 19; and a 16-year-old male were arrested for allegedly resisting or delaying an officer. William Teixeira, 24, was arrested on the same charge but was cited on an outstanding $2,000 warrant out of the San Jose Police Department for theft. He was cited and released.
According to Morgan Hill police Cmdr. David Swing, the four are believed to be Sureño gang members, but the incident does not appear to be related to the recent conviction of a Norteño gang member for the murder of a Sureño.
“I don’t see any nexus at all between this case and the (Anthony) Frausto case,” he said Thursday, referring to the May 1 murder conviction of the 20-year-old Norteño gang member who admitted shooting Luis Bautista, 19, of Gilroy on Sept. 30, 2005. “We haven’t seen a spike, or any increase in gang activity as a result of his conviction.”
The incident began at approximately 6:30pm Monday, when a resident reported a suspicious vehicle in the area. A Morgan Hill police officer responded, and, according to Swing, the vehicle’s occupants played a “cat-and-mouse” game with the officer.
As the four men jumped out of the car, there was a report by a resident that some of them had stuffed guns in their waistbands.
“That raised the level of our response,” Swing said.
More Morgan Hill police officers responded, as well as several Santa Clara County sheriff’s deputies and a helicopter was called in. Officers set up a perimiter around the area, Swing said, as the suspects were jumping over fences in an attempt to get away from the officers. One of the suspects, Torres, apparently gashed his chest on a wrought iron fence he was trying to clear. He was later taken to Regional Medical Center where he was treated and released.
But officers weren’t sure if he had been stabbed during a fight when they first located Torres in a vehicle with another of the suspects, Swing said. They later learned he had cut himself on the fence.
The suspects were arrested without incident, with only Torres receiving an injury.
