Santa Rosa shooting investigation continues as councilman calls for extra city investment in Roseland

Santa Rosa police have yet to make any arrests in a drive-by shooting just after midnight on July 5 that left one person dead and two people critically wounded.

Javier Montes-Medina, 35, was killed when suspected gang members fired more than 20 shots into a crowd of holiday revelers standing out in front of a house on Beachwood Drive in southwest Santa Rosa.

The injured victims included a 17-year-old girl who remained in critical condition on Friday, and a 29-year-old mother, Meaghan Jones, who was shot in the stomach and was recovering after several surgeries, according to authorities.

The fourth victim, a 16-year-old boy, was treated and released from the hospital with less serious injuries.

Investigators do not know who, if anyone, in the crowd was the intended target in the shooting.

Revelers had taken to streets in the area to watch and take part in illegal fireworks displays. The city had canceled its official fireworks show at the county fairgrounds out of COVID-19 concerns.

Police officers and fire inspectors had responded to fireworks complaints in the neighborhood earlier in the night but left without citing anybody or attempting to halt the festivities.

Shortly after midnight, a silver Honda Accord pulled up amid the crowd and occupants inside the car shouted the name of a local street gang, according to witnesses, before firing more than 20 shots, hitting Montes-Medina and the two children.

More than half the attendees at the block party targeted by gunfire were people under 12, Santa Rosa Councilman Eddie Alvarez, who represents the area, said.

At least one person in the crowd fired back, according to police.

During the exchange, Jones, who was in front of a house several doors down from the party that took the brunt of the gunfire, was hit. She had returned to the area to retrieve her sons’ shoes, her husband told The Press Democrat.

“The mother was there to pick up a pair of shoes that she had forgotten and now she’s in the hospital fighting for her life,” Alvarez said on Wednesday. “There’s no excuse for that.”

Investigators have looked into whether Montes-Medina may have been a target of the shooting.

He was not actively involved in gang crime, police said. The Santa Rosa native “appears to have left and severed gang ties several years ago,” police Sgt. Chris Mahurin said.

The area of southwest Santa Rosa has been plagued in the past by violence associated with street gangs and the gun and drug trade.

Community leaders and activists from the Roseland area this week said the latest shooting and Montes-Medina’s death stems from a history of underinvestment in the area, one that Alvarez said has left residents, especially youth, vulnerable to gang recruitment.

“This is part of my frustration is knowing that these are good people under terrible circumstances,” Alvarez said.

Alvarez, the first ever council member from southwest Santa Rosa, said he was close to Montes-Medina and his family and that the shooting had “hit home.”

“It is terrible when we have young adults shooting into a family party where children are the majority there,” he said.

The City Council on Tuesday is slated to start divvying up $34.6 million from President Joe Biden’s pandemic recovery package and more than $27 million in wildfire settlement money from PG&E.

In the wake of the shooting, Alvarez joined two of his colleagues, Vice Mayor Natalie Rogers and Mayor Chris Rogers, in calling for extra spending on the city’s underserved neighborhoods.

They have endured much of the recent increase in violence — gun and gang-related and otherwise — recorded by Santa Rosa authorities in recent months.

The Fourth of July shooting marked the city’s third gang-related homicide this year. Authorities and community leaders have said those killings, along with two homicides that were not gang related and a number of shootings and other gun crimes, makes for a markedly violent first half of 2021.

A police sergeant said the last gang-related slaying in the city before this year was in July 2020. Police data requested by The Press Democrat showed no gang-related homicides in 2019, two in 2018, none in 2017 and one in 2016.

The city’s reaction so far has centered on police staffing. The council voted 6-1 to restore $1 million in funding back into the police department’s budget for four new police officers and a dispatcher. Vice Mayor Rogers, the lone no vote, rejected the entire budget for being unsustainable because of a structural deficit.

Alvarez said it was time to focus on services that can get ahead of the violence.

“I know people want to see more police officers on the street and it gives them comfort but that’s a reactionary system,” he said.

He called for a significant investment in after-school programs, child care and other programs for the city’s vulnerable youth.

“If you don’t invest into people, don’t expect anything to come out of it,” he said.

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