1 person killed, 1 injured in shooting at Santa Rosa warehouse party

One person was killed and another injured in a shooting late Friday night at party at a warehouse on the western edge of Santa Rosa, authorities said.

Late Saturday afternoon, Deputy Rob Dillion, a Sonoma County Sheriffs Office spokesperson, said: “We have one person in custody and at this point there is no ongoing public safety threat.”

Sheriff’s deputies and Santa Rosa and Graton firefighters responded at 12:12 a.m. Saturday to reports of a shooting at 5575 Hall Road, just over a mile west of Santa Rosa’s city limits.

Dillion said a 911 caller who reported the incident said it had taken place at a party.

The beige warehouse where the party and killing took place sits on a plot of land that extends north from Hall Road about 300 to 400 yards to a small creek.

Few other details were immediately available about what had taken place, Dillion said. An investigation is ongoing.

“These type of cases don't unfold the same way every time, and sometimes they end up with delays and hitches. So at this point, that's all I have,” Dillion said.

He could not provide any other information Saturday night on the deceased victim, the status of the wounded person or the person in custody.

“The detectives that are still on scene are working to develop as many leads as possible, and the further into that investigation they get, the more information is available,” Dillion said.

Saturday at about 1 p.m., yellow police tape lay on the ground at the entrance to the property.

Across the street, two young men who appeared to be in their teens or early twenties looked on. One was crying.

The other, grim, said quietly, “Life is sick today, man.”

He said they were from San Rafael but would not say more.

Later, they were joined by two older men who arrived in a pickup truck. They, too, declined to comment.

One of the older men and one of the younger men crossed the road to speak briefly to sheriff’s Deputy Bennet Knight, who was watching over the entrance to the scene. As they spoke, Knight wrote down some information.

Neighbor Michael Lovelace, 60, said the warehouse had been built “at least 20 years ago” but nobody had lived on the property for many years. He said he believed the owner was from San Rafael.

Parties that typically involved “families and kids” were “once in a while” occurrences at the warehouse and uneventful until now, he said.

One of those parties had taken place Friday night and, at first, Lovelace said, it had seemed no different from the others. Then, he said, shortly after midnight he was awakened by the sound of a helicopter circling overhead and flashing law enforcement and emergency vehicle lights outside the property.

He hadn’t heard or seen anything out of the ordinary until that point. “It was normal hooting and hollering” he said. “That’s why it was shocking when you see all the sheriffs out there with their lights.”

From his yard about 100 yards to the west, detectives could be seen inspecting some of about a dozen cars parked around the warehouse. A car alarm went off.

There were two garage doors on the building’s western wall. One was rolled open and Lovelace said it was around that door that the partygoers often clustered.

The property’s entrance is on Hall Road, a narrow rural thoroughfare that connects West Third Street and Sanford Road. Behind the warehouse was a large shipping storage container and a children’s play structure.

Several cannabis operations on the city’s western outskirts have been involved in deadly armed break-ins and gun violence in the past decade.

Asked whether the Hall Road warehouse was connected to any cannabis growing or storage operation, Dillion said, “I don’t have any indication that that was the case.”

You can reach Staff Writer Jeremy Hay at 707-387-2960 or jeremy.hay@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jeremyhay.