Man held in fatal shooting of motorist had weapons, untraceable gun, police say

SUNNYVALE » After a minor fender bender off Homestead Road on Saturday afternoon, one of the drivers pulled over and prepared to exchange information with the other motorist.

The driver didn’t even have a chance to open his door before a hail of bullets battered his car, killing him in his seat and wounding a woman riding with him, according to police.

The other motorist, whom police identified as 23-year-old San Jose resident Jason Kazumi Tahara, is being held without bail in the Santa Clara County Main jail on suspicion of murder and attempted murder, after what police described as an unprovoked attack following a car crash in which no one was injured.

“This was a completely unprovoked tragedy, an act of senseless violence,” said Capt. Dan Pistor of the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety.

Pistor added that there is no evidence indicating that Tahara and the victims knew one another, or had any interaction before the crash.

The man who died has not been publicly identified pending notification of his next of kin. The woman who was wounded is expected to survive her injuries.

Tahara was a fugitive for a few hours Saturday until he was located near his home in San Jose, then arrested by San Jose police at a gas station at the city’s border with Campbell.

But that was far from the end of the story, because around the time of his arrest, an officer spotted a propane tank in Tahara’s maroon SUV next to a “suspicious device,” prompting a call-out of the SJPD bomb squad to examine the vehicle.

Once the vehicle was deemed safe, there was one more troubling discovery to make: a cache of firearms that police itemized as two “tactical style” rifles, several high-capacity rifle magazines, two handguns also accompanied by several high-capacity magazines, body armor, and more than 400 rounds of handgun and rifle ammunition.

And the handgun that investigators believed was used in the fatal shooting earlier that day was unregistered and had no serial number.

During a subsequent search of Tahara’s home, Pistor said police found several tactical rifle parts and evidence that he might have been building and modifying rifles at his home.

He added that Tahara could be subject to additional criminal charges based on the weapons recovered in his car and his home.

The shooting was reported around 4:25 p.m. near Homestead Road and Linnet Lane. Sunnyvale investigators soon identified a suspect, and San Jose police spotted him at a liquor store in their city.

They followed the suspect to the Shell gas station at Salmar and East Hamilton avenues in Campbell, where he was arrested just before 7 p.m.

Santa Clara County court records show no listed case history for Tahara.

It was the second highprofile case handled by Sunnyvale police in about a week involving the recovery of an array of weapons from a suspect.

On March 1, they arrested 31-year-old Thomas Joseph Andrews after he allegedly threatened a shooting at the UPS facility in Sunnyvale where he worked.

After the arrest, police served a search warrant at Andrews’ apartment and recovered five “tacticalstyle” rifles, three handguns, a shotgun, body armor and a multitude of high-capacity magazines. They also reported finding more than 20,000 rounds of handgun and rifle ammunition, a portion of which was stored in backpacks ready to be carried out.

Anyone with information about Saturday’s shooting can contact Sunnyvale Detective Ben Holt at 408-730-7143 or at bholt@sunnyvale.ca.gov.