Father remembers SR shooting victim

<p>Santa Rosa construction worker Matthew Allen Toste’s bold defense of a female cousin who was being harassed by strangers in a downtown Santa Rosa parking lot escalated into his fatal shooting, the 32-year-old victim’s father said Monday.</p><p>“I do know my son,” said Bob Toste of Roseville, recounting witness accounts of the 12:15 a.m. Sunday shooting at a Seventh Street city parking garage. “And he won’t back down from things like that, but he doesn’t provoke them.”</p><p>Toste, who moved to Santa Rosa in the past year to take a job with Granite Construction, had attended a Saturday evening company Christmas party near Railroad Square before he and at least three companions headed for Seven Ultra Lounge, his father said.</p><p>Toste was accompanied by a female cousin, his date and the cousin’s husband, his father said.</p><p>While the group headed from the garage to the Seventh Street nightclub shortly after midnight, at least five men in their 20s approached the women and were making rude, sexually-provocative comments, Bob Toste and a witness said.</p><p>In his cousin’s defense, Matthew Toste “calmly said, ‘Hey, she’s a married woman ... and that’s about enough,’” his father said.</p><p>A man who had made rude remarks then pushed Toste’s cousin aside and lunged at Toste, his father said, but Toste punched the man in the face.</p><p>“My son knows how to hit, and knocked the guy out, and moments later gunshots rang out,” Toste said.</p><p>One gunman fired multiple gunshots, according to Toste and the witness, striking the victim and two other men who were part of the five-man group, which police described as gang members. Toste died in the garage of his wounds, and one of the other two men shot remained in the hospital Monday morning, Santa Rosa Sgt. Lisa Banayat said.</p><p>The third man wounded had been treated and released.</p><p>Later Sunday, police arrested two Santa Rosa men on suspicion of homicide — Paul Whiterock, 26, and Joseph Lopez Jr., 18.</p><p>Additional suspects were being interviewed, Banayat said, and police released no information about the weapon used, the number of bullet wounds Toste suffered, or when an autopsy would be conducted by the Sonoma County Coroner.</p><p>Toste said his son’s autopsy would take place Tuesday, and that arrangements for an out-of-town funeral were pending.</p><p>Matthew Toste was a single father raising a 5-year-old son in Santa Rosa, and sharing custody with his former wife, who resides in Alaska.</p><p>The family is seeking to arrange a trust fund to benefit the child, the boy’s grandfather said.</p>