Shooting probe takes police to Pleasanton, but no arrests

BELMONT >> Police are serving search warrants across the region in their investigation of the Monday night shooting that killed a 17-year-old Carlmont High School student, and are chasing what they call “promising leads.”

That probe took police on a 35-mile drive across the San Francisco Bay, where Tuesday evening they served a search warrant in Pleasanton, accompanied by local police and a SWAT team that descended on a home near Amber Lane and Blossom Court.

Three people were detained and interviewed, but no one was arrested, police said.

“This is one of several search warrants that have been served around the Bay Area in connection with this investigation,” Belmont police wrote in a news release Wednesday.

And while police stated that “a number of promising leads are being pursued,” they were tight-lipped about their progress in tracking down who killed Mohammad Othman.

“Belmont police and allied agency investigators continue to interview witnesses and follow leads as they are developed, and additional search warrants are anticipated,” police wrote. “Specific information regarding leads or items seized is not being released due to the dynamic and ongoing nature of this investigation.”

Meanwhile, additional counselors are at Carlmont High School as the campus mourns the loss of Mohammad, a senior who as a varsity football player contributed to the school’s run to a Central Coast Section Division 4 championship this past season.

“As a community, let us come together and send our love and support to the family. They are experiencing an unimaginable pain that I pray no one in our community will ever have to experience again,” Sequoia Union High School District Superintendent Mary Streshly wrote in a community email. “Moments such as these are a reminder that we must always work together to ensure our students are able to enjoy their high school years surrounded by our love and support.”

Belmont police went to Central Elementary School on Middle Road around 11 p.m. Monday after getting a call minutes earlier from Mohammad’s family, who requested a welfare check on the boy and directed them to the Central campus.

Arriving officers found the teen lying in the parking lot with an “apparent gunshot wound,” police said. The officers tried to revive him, but the boy was pronounced dead at the scene by Belmont Fire Department paramedics.

Other than stating their belief that the slaying was not random and that the victim knew the shooter, police have not detailed any suspected circumstances behind an attack that marks a rare homicide in the town of about 27,000. A source familiar with the investigation told this news organization that at least some of the people Mohammad met with at the elementary school were affiliated with Carlmont High.

Anyone with information about the shooting can contact Belmont police at 650595-7400 or police@belmont.gov, or the Belmont police crime tip line at 650598-3000.