DA clears officers who fatally shot man
Suspect kidnapped family, killed 2 during shooting spree in San Jose, Modesto, officials say
Prosecutors have cleared two San Jose police officers who shot and killed a man in June after he held his grandmother and children captive during a shooting spree in which he killed his friend in San Jose and then killed his ex-girlfriend in Modesto.
Raymond Joseph Calderon, 30, died after he was shot once each by Lt. Robert Lang and Officer Edward Carboni on the morning of June 22 at a home on Berndorf Drive in South San Jose, where he had gone in an attempt to evade police.
Calderon was wanted after he forced his grandmother and two young sons to ride with him as he drove her pickup truck to an East San Jose home. There, he shot his friend, 36-year-old Freddy Herrera, before driving to Modesto and fatally shooting 29-yearold Michelle Rose Gonzales, the mother of Calderon's third son, a 6-month-old.
Backed in part by video footage from a police helicopter and the body cameras from multiple officers, Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Robert Baker concluded in a shooting report released Jan. 6 that the two officers were legally justified in shooting Calderon after he reportedly ran out of the Berndorf Drive home and pointed a handgun at Lang, who was with Carboni in the turret of an armored vehicle out front.
“Based on the facts of this case, Lieutenant Lang and Officer Carboni reasonably believed they needed to use deadly force against Raymond Calderon,” Baker wrote.
Baker's report reveals previously undisclosed details about Calderon's state of mind at the time. According to witness statements, Calderon was with his grandmother and two of his sons at a South San Jose community swimming pool June 21 when the grandmother got a call from the
boys' mother asking for them to come home. That apparently agitated Calderon, who accused his grandmother of “setting him up,” and he voiced his belief that a man in a pool office was an undercover police officer.
At one point, the grandmother, whose identity was withheld in the report, recalled that Calderon said to her, “You brought this all on yourself.”
From there, Calderon made the family get in his grandmother's Ford F-150 truck and drove to Herrera's house on Mount Shasta Drive. On the way, he called the children's mother to arrange a handoff of the boys. But the mother, who had a restraining order against Calderon, reportedly insisted that police be present.
The mother later told investigators of his response: “I knew you called the police … you aren't getting your kids back, I'm going to (expletive) kill everybody … You (expletive) up, so now the kids are going to see some (expletive).”
At the Mount Shasta Drive home, the report states that Calderon spoke to Herrera, who then helped load a basket of Calderon's belongings into the truck. Without
warning, Calderon reportedly “pulled out a brownish-gold handgun and shot Herrera five times in the chest and back, killing him,” followed by him cursing at Herrera and yelling at his grandmother, “This is all your fault!”
Calderon then drove to his grandmother's San Jose home, where he forced her to give him her bank card and retrieved a different weapon, a black handgun, from a storage shed. He made them ride with him to Modesto, during which he repeatedly hit his grandmother in the face with the first gun.
When they got to Gonzales' home, the report states, she came out and walked up to the truck's driver door and greeted Calderon, asking him, “What's the matter?” Calderon abruptly shot Gonzales three times at close range, killing her.
Soon after, Modesto police contacted SJPD, who obtained emergency authorization to track his phone location. That tracking began at 11:37 p.m.; his phone reportedly showed he was driving south on Highway 101 toward San Jose. Within 10 minutes, an SJPD helicopter was following him as he drove toward his grandmother's house.
According to the grandmother's account, Calderon told her she was going to die and made her hold both of his sons in her lap, but then abruptly pulled over and told them to get out.
SJPD officers were closing in on his position, and he led them toward Berndorf Drive. He reached a dead end and got out of the truck with it still moving, leaving it to crash into a fence. He made his way to Berndorf, with a police officer chasing him on foot; Calderon reportedly fired two shots at the officer.
Calderon tried to force his way into one home, but the resident refused to let him in and ran to safety, prompting him to jump a fence into another yard, where he holed up in a shed for several hours. Neighboring homes were evacuated, and around 7:20 a.m. June 22, after repeated loudspeaker announcements telling him to surrender, police deployed tear gas into the yard.
Calderon ran out of the front of the home with a gun in his right hand, the report states. Lang told investigators he had “no doubt” his life was in danger, and he and Carboni fired almost simultaneously, Lang from his sniper rifle and Carboni with his carbine.
The June shooting was SJPD'S third and final police shooting of 2022, and the second such incident that led to a person's death. It also marked the third fatal police shooting involving Carboni.
In May 2019, he was one of three officers who fatally shot 24-yearold Efren Esquivel, who had been sought in a car theft and was dragging his sergeant with the stolen vehicle. That same year, on Oct. 31, Carboni fatally shot 33-year-old Francis Calonge, who was carrying what turned out to be a replica handgun when he walked toward Independence High School on Jackson Avenue. Carboni was trailing from about 120 feet away when he opened fire after giving several orders to Calonge to drop his weapon.