By Sean Webby
KNIGHT RIDDER
A San Jose police officer shot and wounded a man who was allegedly driving a stolen car at a group of officers looking for a dangerous parolee Tuesday morning on a small East Side residential street.
Alberto Paul Gonzales, 28, was expected to survive. The officer was not injured.
“The officer feared for his life and thought this guy was going to run him over,” said Santa Clara County Sheriff’s spokesman Serge Palanov, who described the event.
Palanov said Gonzales, who is not the man police sought, apologized for trying to run down the officers. “He said he was sorry, he saw the officers, he just wanted to get away.” Palanov said Gonzales was expected to be booked on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and other charges.
Police were still looking for the gang member, who somehow slipped away in the chaos on Woodhaven Drive -- an unincorporated street in the Alum Rock area of East San Jose.
At the time of the shooting, police had been searching for David Lee Lopez, a 28-year-old parolee reportedly armed with a 9 mm or .22-caliber handgun and considered dangerous.
Anyone with information about the suspect can contact detectives Tom Tiphayachan or Doug Tran at the San Jose Police Gang Investigations Unit at 408-277-3835.
The case began around 8 a.m. Tuesday when police showed up on the small street that runs off White Road with a domestic-violence warrant for Lopez, reportedly a member of the Nuestra Familia gang.
Officers watched a home where they believed Lopez was staying. Police saw a car driving away and stopped it nearby. It was a woman, who police believe may have been a decoy. She was taken into custody for questioning and had not been identified by late Tuesday. Another car with someone from the home left. Police stopped it. But it was still not the man they were looking for.
Then a man later identified as Gonzales ran from the home. He burst into another nearby home and stayed there while police ordered him to surrender. He then got into a Nissan Maxima and sped down the small residential street, right at a phalanx of officers with their guns drawn.
One fired.
Police did not disclose the officer’s name. But he has been placed on routine administrative leave while the investigation is pending.
It was also unclear from investigators where Gonzales was wounded. But the beat-up Nissan had a shattered driver’s side window that looked as though it may have been penetrated by a single bullet. A source said that Gonzales was shot in an arm.
When police searched the home on Woodhaven they had been watching, they could not find Lopez.
Later in the day, residents of two nearby homes reported that they had been burglarized. Police said they believe Lopez was the burglar.