Santa Rosa woman faces ‘long recovery’ after shooting that killed 1, injured 3

Fireworks lit up the sky Sunday night as Meaghan Jones drove back to the Fourth of July party in southwest Santa Rosa to pick up the shoes her 4-year-old son had left behind.

Moments after she arrived at the house on Beachwood Avenue, she was being whisked away to a hospital with a bullet in her abdomen.

“It must have been 10 minutes after she left our house,” her husband, Jonathon Jones, said on Tuesday as he recounted the events of the previous two days. “A buddy of mine called saying, ‘She just got shot. You need to get down here.’”

Jones, 29, is one of four people who were shot early Monday during what police described as an “unofficial block party” near the intersection of Beachwood and Myrtlewood drives.

Dozens of people were outside throughout the night celebrating Independence Day and watching illegal fireworks displays in the neighborhood just west of Highway 101 and north of Hearn Avenue.

Santa Rosa police said a silver Honda Accord drove through the crowd shortly after midnight and stopped in front of a house on Beachwood where people were setting off fireworks.

Witnesses told investigators that one or more people inside the car shouted the name of a local street gang and then opened fire at people in the front yard.

Police have not established whether anyone was targeted, Santa Rosa Police Department Chief Ray Navarro said Tuesday.

“Gang members are opportunistic in nature,” he said. “They’re driving around, see some people ... and they take advantage of the opportunity.”

A 35-year-old man who was shot, Javier Montes-Medina, died at the scene, police said.

A 17-year-old girl was critically injured and remained unconscious in a hospital on Tuesday. A 16-year-old boy was also injured, but he has been released from a hospital, police said.

After the initial burst of gunfire, at least one person in the crowd shot back at the people inside the Honda, police said.

That’s when Jones was hit. She was in front of her friends’ house several doors south of the one where the initial victims were shot.

It’s unclear whether Jones was shot by somebody in the crowd or in the car, but investigators are working to identify where each of the more than 20 bullets fired that night came from, Sgt. Chris Mahurin said.

The driver of the Honda eventually crashed into a parked car on Beachwood and the people inside took off running, police said.

Investigators on Tuesday were sifting through the contents of the car and talking to people who witnessed the gunfire in search of clues about who was shooting, Mahurin said.

As of Tuesday afternoon, no suspects had been identified and no arrests had been made, according to Mahurin.

He declined to reveal the name of the gang the people inside the Honda were said to have been yelling at the crowd, but he added that witness statements about the exchange have led police to believe the shooting was gang-related.

Jonathon Jones believes the bullet that hit his wife was fired by someone in the crowd that night.

“Some of our friends were saying, ‘Get down. Hide. Get under cover,’” he said. “Unfortunately, she didn’t move fast enough and ended up catching a stray bullet.”

The Joneses got to the party at their friend’s house around 2 p.m. Sunday and spent the afternoon barbecuing with a group of about 15 people, including their son and three other children.

With Jonathon scheduled to work Monday morning, the family left the gathering around 11:45 p.m., before some of their friends, so he could get a good night’s sleep.

When they got home, Meaghan decided to turn around.

Their house is a five-minute drive from the party, and she wanted to pick up her son’s shoes. She had also been having a good time with her friends and wasn’t ready for the night to be over, so she planned to stay a while, her husband said.

Jonathon was crawling into bed when he got the call about the shooting. He woke up his son and raced to the scene in time to tell his wife he loved her before paramedics wheeled her into an ambulance.

“It’s going to be a long recovery,” he said Tuesday after visiting her in the hospital.

Meaghan had surgery on Monday and doctors removed about a foot and a half of her intestines, Jonathon said. Although she was hit with one bullet, her intestines were pierced 12 times, he said.

A second surgery was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.

Jonathon has started a GoFundMe account to raise money for his wife’s medical bills. She’ll have to take time off from her job in health care, he said.

Police have not determined whether the shooting was a targeted or indiscriminate attack, Mahurin said, but they believe that Jones and the teenagers who were shot were not intended victims.

Investigators are working to determine whether Montes-Medina was targeted, he said.

Staff writer Andrew Graham contributed to this report.

You can reach Staff Writer Matt Pera at matthew.pera@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Matt__Pera.