Suspect arrested in fatal Petaluma shooting

A 37-year-old Santa Rosa man was in custody Thursday on suspicion of killing a Petaluma man who was found dead of a gunshot wound in his home, police said.

Police suspect Mikol Wayne Stewart went to the hillside Petaluma home of Arturo Hinojosa, 49, and shot the man in the first homicide to take place in the city since 2012.

Police were interviewing a woman who was a potential witness to the shooting or its immediate aftermath, Petaluma Police Lt. Dan Fish said.

A motive remained unclear Thursday.

“We’ve established that there is no other suspect,” Fish said. “Now trying to sort out everybody’s movements prior to this happening.”

Stewart and Hinojosa apparently were acquaintances, but Fish would not elaborate on what police have uncovered so far about the details of how they knew one another.

Reached by phone Thursday, Hinojosa’s mother, Mary, who lives across the street from her son, said that her family is heartbroken. “There is nothing to say; my son is gone.”

“We don’t know … I don’t know anything,” Mary Hinojosa said. “All I know is that I came home from work and my son was dead.”

The shooting investigation began just before 4 p.m. Wednesday with a frantic phone call from a woman who told dispatchers there had been a shooting at the home on Suncrest Hill Drive, a narrow lane off Sunnyslope Road.

Officers found the body inside the home near Helen Putnam Regional Park.

Fish said there was no sign of a break-in.

Detectives used information about a car spotted in the area to track Stewart to Santa Rosa and detain him. He later was arrested and booked into the Sonoma County Jail, where he was being held Thursday without bail on suspicion of murder and burglary, court records show. Fish said the burglary charge indicates that he is accused of going to the house to commit a crime, in this case shooting Hinojosa.

He was scheduled to be arraigned Monday.

Stewart has a criminal record that includes two convictions in 2009, including a DUI case and a conviction for felony spousal battery, court records show. He was ordered to serve nine months in jail and was given the option of participating in work release or electronic home confinement.

Stewart was convicted of misdemeanor spousal battery in 2004 and got probation. That same year, he was arrested for fighting but the charges were dismissed.

Reached by phone, Stewart’s aunt was shocked to hear her nephew had been arrested on suspicion of murder.

She said Stewart worked in construction and spent his weekends riding dune buggies at the beach with his wife and two children.

“I can’t believe Mikol would do something like that,” said Nancy Oxsel of Utah. “Mikol has been off drugs and all that stuff for years. He’s been an excellent family man - devoted to his family, a good father - and I just can’t believe Mikol would do that.”

Fish said detectives had ruled out any connection to a medical marijuana garden at the Suncrest Hill property.

Nor did it relate to Hinojosa’s status on the sex offender registry, he said. In 1999, Hinojosa was convicted of engaging in oral copulation with a person under age 16, court records show.

You can reach Staff Writer Julie Johnson at 521-5220 or julie.johnson?@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter ?@jjpressdem.