ngartrell@bayareanewsgroup.com
SANTA CLARA — Police officers on a regular, late-night patrol pulled into a 7-Eleven store to do whatever cops do at troublesome intersections that never sleep. When they looked inside, they saw a man with a gun standing at the counter.
“It was just a coincidence that (police) were there,” said Lt. Kurt Clarke, a spokesman for this police force in the heart of Silicon Valley. “They happened to be pulling in and witnessed a robbery in progress.”
The two officers shot and killed the suspect at about 2 a.m. Sunday outside the 24-hour convenience store at Scott Boulevard and Monroe Street. According to Clarke, the robber had taken a shot at the clerk inside the store but did not hit him. By late morning the department’s crime investigation van had come and gone, and the store was surprisingly back in business.
The owner of the store declined to identify himself or comment as he sped off in a car, leaving a young clerk in charge. News reporters, accustomed to being locked out of crime scenes, took photos and video of a bullet hole behind the counter. They looked for blood but did not see any. Regular customers who knew the Saturday night clerk asked about him.
“He’s OK,” the Sunday morning clerk said. “He wasn’t shot. He’s good.”
Did not stop
The store sits in a working-to-middle-class neighborhood filled with blocky, low-income apartments and modest, single-family houses. Tucked between downtown and Santa Clara university to the south and the Great America amusement park and Levi’s Stadium to the north, the area generally doesn’t look bad, but it does look like a place left behind in the Information Age.
Watching from a liquor store parking across Monroe Street, a small group of men described the area as a trouble spot frequently visited by street gang members, graffiti taggers, alcoholics, drug addicts, beggars and homeless people. On the other hand, local resident Augustin Mendoza said he’s lived in the neighborhood for seven, trouble-free years.
“For me everything has been peaceful,” the Mexican immigrant construction worker said in Spanish. “If you don’t look for trouble here, you won’t find it.”
According to Clarke, the officers on patrol reported that the alleged robber pointed a gun at the clerk and fired a shot — but missed — and then ran out of the store. The officers said he failed to stop when they ordered him to. At that point, Clarke said, police feared for their safety and others in the parking lot and fired at the suspect.
How many times they shot him isn’t clear. The suspect died at the scene, Clarke said, with a loaded firearm and stolen money next to him. Clarke confirmed that there were no injuries to police officers, the Sunday night clerk or other “citizens in the parking lot.” Clarke did not refer to them as witnesses later Sunday.
Eye witness
However, one of those “citizens,” a man who described himself as homeless and underemployed, told the Mercury News said he was hanging out with friends outside the store’s entrance at the time of the incident.
“I saw this guy with a black mask on point a gun at him,” said Joel Amaya, 32, of Santa Clara about the 7-Eleven clerk. “He was shaking the gun,” he said of the alleged robber, “and then he shot and I saw the guy (clerk) fall back. I didn’t see any blood.”
Amaya said he ducked as police fired about six shots. One of the police officers then told him and his friends to stay put, but they took off, anyway. Amaya said he told his buddies, “You know, guys, let’s get out of here because they’re not going to leave us alone for days, weeks, months. We don’t need that.”
The problem with Amaya’s story is that he admitted he was “drunk” at the time of the shooting and he was still drinking beer as he described the incident to the Mercury News the following morning. He said he was reluctant to come forward as a witness.
“I don’t remember nothing, and then I do,” Amaya said. “It all depends on how people treat me.”
Meanwhile, the officers who shot the suspect have been placed on paid administrative leave while the incident is investigated. That is standard procedure. Police also are not releasing the suspected robber’s name or age at this time.
For Santa Clara, this is the second officer-involved shooting of 2015 and the first fatality. In an incident involving suspicion of auto-burglary in early February, according to police, the driver of a luxury sedan sped off and drove straight at an officer, who fired into the car.
