2 suspects arrested in shooting of teen
SAN JOSE >> Two men were arrested Thursday in connection with a shooting that wounded a teenage boy in East San Jose two weeks ago, according to police.
While searching for the pair of suspects, police also took a man into custody on a bench warrant for an unrelated robbery. Officers arrested him after he barricaded himself inside a South San Jose home for a few hours while a SWAT team waited outside, police said.
The San Jose Police Department’s covert response unit was on Midfield Avenue, off Havana Drive and King Road, around 4 p.m. Thursday to serve an arrest warrant in the Aug. 30 shooting of a boy on the same block. The shooting prompted a precautionary lockdown at nearby Overfelt High
School. The victim was taken to the hospital by a family member and is expected to survive, authorities said.
After the shooting, detectives identified two suspects. When officers went to a home on Midfield Avenue on Thursday, they spotted one of them, 18-year-old San Jose resident Marco Alanis, climbing over a back fence, and arrested him, Lt. Brian Shab said.
Police then went to a home in the 3700 block of Ezie Street, near Seven Trees Boulevard, looking for the second suspect in the shooting, 19-year-old San Jose resident Robert Aguirre. Shab said officers watched as Aguirre and another man “were seen entering the residence with what were believed to be firearms.”
Shab said they recognized the second man as 26-year-old San Jose resident Cesar Cortez from an earlier unrelated robbery investigation, and determined he was wanted on a $500,000 bench warrant for failing to appear in court.
The officers surrounded the home around 8 p.m. and called for everyone inside to exit, Shab said. Most of the occupants left peacefully, but Aguirre reportedly jumped a fence into a side yard and tried to flee before he was caught by a police dog.
Aguirre suffered what police described as superficial injuries to his head — his booking photo showed him with a head bandage — and was treated and released from a local hospital before being booked into jail. Shab said Aguirre was found with a loaded handgun when he was arrested.
Cortez, meanwhile, refused to leave the home and barricaded himself inside, Shab said. That prompted police to summon the MERGE unit, San Jose’s version of SWAT, and Cortez kept them at bay for nearly three hours before surrendering just before 11 p.m.
Alanis and Aguirre were booked into the Santa Clara County Main Jail. Alanis is being held without bail, while Aguirre is being held on $575,000 bail, according to jail records. Cortez is being held on the $500,000 warrant at the Elmwood men’s jail in Milpitas.