Anonymous tip on Santa Rosa council member Eddie Alvarez led police to seek search warrant in fatal bar shooting

An anonymous letter that reached Santa Rosa police detectives weeks after the department had arrested two suspects in a fatal shooting outside a nightclub led investigators to serve a search warrant on a City Council member and seize his cellphones in January, according to warrant documents unsealed Monday.

The letter, which reached police Oct. 18, 2021, suggested Councilman Eddie Alvarez may have had something to do with the Sept. 25 fatal incident because he was at the Roseland bar that night and may have had a grudge against the victim for a break-in at Alvarez’s cannabis dispensary.

Police had arrested two men, Fogatia Fuiava and Ednie Afamasaga, within days of the shooting in the parking lot of the Whiskey Tip, a popular bar on Sebastopol Road.

According to an affidavit, Detective Matt White, who investigated the homicide, said he believed the two may have been motivated by prior disputes with the victim, Kenneth McDaniel.

Fuiava and Afamasaga were victims of previous unsolved shootings, according to White’s affidavit. In one 2018 case, police suspected McDaniel of shooting Afamasaga.

It’s not clear from the affidavit if police had considered Alvarez as a possible suspect before receiving the anonymous tip. Police later said Alvarez was not a suspect when the search warrant became public knowledge in March.

The day after the McDaniel shooting, Alvarez told The Press Democrat he was at the bar that night but left before the shooting began. Both the affidavit and previous records obtained by the newspaper show he also informed police quickly that he had known the victim because of the break-in at his Santa Rosa dispensary, The Hook.

After receiving the letter, police began to consider the possibility that Alvarez was involved in the killing, the affidavit shows. White also referenced a drive-by shooting months earlier during a July 4 block party in Roseland, where Alvarez was in the crowd.

Alvarez later declined to help police identify people who returned fire at the car and hit an innocent bystander, the affidavit said.

In an interview Monday, Alvarez told The Press Democrat he did not know who had returned fire and wounded the bystander. He reiterated his belief that police had targeted him with the search warrant because he would not give them what they wanted for their investigation into the drive-by shooting.

“I feel more strongly than ever that this is a vendetta,” said Alvarez, a business owner who is in his first term representing a district that takes in most of southwest Santa Rosa. “How can they say I’m not forthcoming?”

The Press Democrat obtained the affidavit Monday after seeking access to the documents through a court motion filed in March. While police had ruled out Alvarez as a suspect by that time, they refused to unseal records that showed what grounds they’d given a judge to seize his three cellphones.

Shooting at Whiskey Tip

The night of the September shooting, Alvarez arrived at the Whiskey Tip at around the same time as the shooters, according to the police affidavit, drawing from security camera footage. He was standing near them at times during a hip-hop concert in the crowded bar, according to the footage, and left before the shooting.

Because of this, White wrote that he “believe(d) it is likely that Alvarez may have had knowledge of events leading up to McDaniel’s murder.”

There is no indication Alvarez spoke to either shooters or the victim, and he has said he does not know the two suspects.

The June 2020 dispensary burglary provided a possible motive for the council member to have McDaniel “killed in retaliation,” White wrote in the affidavit for a Jan. 10 search warrant signed by Sonoma County Judge Arthur Wick.

White’s declaration is the first time police have directly stated that detectives, at least at one time, believed Alvarez may have been involved or responsible for the slaying.

Santa Rosa police officers served Alvarez the warrant as he left a Jan. 11 council meeting at City Hall, in front of two of his council colleagues.

But until he heard details of the affidavit, shared with him Monday by The Press Democrat, he said he didn’t know the basis of the search warrant. He voiced frustration that it was an anonymous tip.

“We don’t investigate code enforcement violations based on anonymous tips, and yet, they were willing to go this far without corroborating this anonymous letter,” he said. “There’s a reason why people in my community do not trust law enforcement and it’s on full display here.”

In the affidavit, White wrote he found portions of the letter credible because the writer knew details about Alvarez that were not at the time part of the public record — such as the council member’s presence at the scene of the July 4 drive-by shooting.

The anonymous letter included other allegations that were not truthful — for example, that club security left the bar to make way for the shooting. In fact, a bouncer was among the first to reach the victim after the flurry of 29 shots and gave testimony in the murder case last week.

The writer also suggested Alvarez was part-owner of the Whiskey Tip. He is not, he said in an interview. State law requires City Council members to disclose their economic interests and Alvarez does not list any business connected to the nightclub.

Alvarez responds

The shadow cast over the councilmember by the search warrant has hurt his efforts to represent southwestern Santa Rosa, Alvarez said. He is the first person directly elected to represent Roseland, the city’s historically underdeveloped, majority Latino neighborhood that has become a focus of council work on social justice over the last two years.

The Press Democrat first reported on the search warrant in March, when the newspaper filed a motion in court to have the underlying affidavit unsealed, given that Alvarez was an elected official and police had declared he was not a suspect.

City officials resisted releasing both the court records and communications between Alvarez and then-Santa Rosa Police Chief Ray Navarro, citing the blanket secrecy of an ongoing investigation.

A copy of those communications obtained by The Press Democrat indicated they did not include any reference to an ongoing investigation but did capture Alvarez’s anguish, directed at the chief immediately after the warrant was served.

“For God’s sake, I have been invited into our colleague’s homes, trust given, met their families, and the thought that they may see me in another light kills me, Chief,” Alvarez wrote.

On Monday night, after this story published online, Santa Rosa Police Chief John Cregan directed a Press Democrat reporter to the city communications office for comment. Late Tuesday afternoon, that office posted a statement defending the police investigation into Alvarez.

“The Santa Rosa Police Department has an obligation to the public to investigate all leads in connection with any serious crime, regardless of who is involved,” the statement read. “SRPD investigators, the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office, and Sonoma County Superior Court Judges concluded that there was sufficient information to believe that evidence related to the investigation could be obtained through the execution of the search warrant.”

Detectives’ struggle with Alvarez

The affidavit indicates a different judge, Lawrence Ornell, signed the search warrant Dec. 20, 2021.

White looked for Alvarez at his business, his home and other locations, including a City Council meeting, but did not find him, the affidavit states. Alvarez attended that council meeting by Zoom, according to the affidavit.

The first warrant expired and White secured another one, signed by Wick.

The affidavit outlines police distrust of Alvarez stretching back to the investigation of the July 4 drive-by shooting. At that event, multiple people in a silver Honda Accord drove through an unsanctioned block party on Beachwood Drive in Roseland and opened fire on a group of people standing in a front yard.

Two teenagers were hit but recovered, and one man, 35 year-old Javier Montes-Medina, was killed. Someone at the party fired back at the Honda and struck a 29-year-old woman, critically injuring her.

After the shooting, Alvarez told The Press Democrat he was close to Montes-Medina. He called at the time for increased investment in youth services and other programs in his district in the wake of the violence, saying increased policing was “a reactionary system” and not the answer.

Police have not announced any arrests in that shooting.

According to the affidavit, a sergeant investigating that case spent several weeks trying to speak with Alvarez about the shooting without success. When he finally reached the council member, Alvarez told police he had seen three people return fire at the Honda but could not identify them.

Asked by Sgt. Brandon Matthies if he knew more than he was telling law enforcement, Alvarez said “yes, sir,” according to the affidavit.

He told a sergeant the police should be focused on the aggressors, despite the critical injury to the woman, because the people shooting back were firing “in self-defense.”

“I just wouldn’t know enough,” Alvarez told Matthies, when pressed on the importance of identifying who shot the woman.

Navarro, the former police chief, later asked him for information about the shooting at more than one city event, he said. “I didn’t sign up (for elected office) to be a cop, I signed up to improve people’s lives,” Alvarez told The Press Democrat.

After the Whiskey Tip shooting, Matthies again reached out to Alvarez. “I now have two homicides to talk to you about,” he wrote in a text message, “We need to schedule a time to meet.”

Alvarez responded. “Death seems to be following me, or (it’s) life in Roseland,” he wrote.

He then agreed to meet with Matthies the following day and informed him he had identified McDaniel, the victim, as one of three people who broke into his marijuana dispensary the year before.

You can reach Staff Writer Andrew Graham at 707-526-8667 or andrew.graham@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @AndrewGraham88