By Christian Burkin
Record Staff Writer
June 16, 2011
Stockton- The spot on Sutter Street where Joseph "Joey" Cruz was shot Tuesday afternoon is on the way from Cruz's brother's house to his sister's, where he lived.
His brother, Randy Garcia, said Cruz had just come from a store on California Street, where he picked up a three-pack of beer, and was either headed home or to a friend's house when he was shot, about 3:30 p.m., on Sutter Street just south of Noble Street.
Cruz, 31, was alive on the street when he was found, near his bicycle, but was pronounced dead after being taken to a local hospital.
On Wednesday afternoon, about a block away from where Cruz was shot, his family and friends gathered at Garcia's house. Cruz, they said, could be intimidating. He was big - 6 feet tall and about 300 pounds - and tattooed, but he wasn't violent.
"When he hugged you, his whole body hugged you," said his aunt, Yolanda Moreno. Cruz's family sharply disputed any suggestion he was a gang member, or that his slaying was related to gang activity. Garcia said that in their youth, he and Cruz had been involved with gangs, but that was long ago.
"Whoever shot him might have been in a gang, but whatever it was over, we don't know," said Cruz's sister, Leticia Avila.
According to the Police Department, witnesses reported Cruz was confronted on Sutter Street by a roughly 20-year-old Latino man with long, brown hair and tattooed arms. The suspect was wearing a light shirt and pants and was carrying a black backpack with white writing on it.
Cruz was the most recent victim in a concentrated period of violence that started last week with the fatal shooting on South Sutter Street of 17-year-old Juan Juarez-Martinez.
That was followed Saturday with two homicides: That of David Lewis Jr., 34, who was found shot near California and Fremont streets, and Dominique Jones, 41, who was discovered by police during a traffic stop near Airport Way and Poplar Street.
On Monday, Xavier Javier Plascencia, 18, was shot and killed in midday in the 2200 block of Waterloo Road, and that evening, 32-year-old Tamu Malikia Bouldin was killed when a parolee fleeing deputies crashed into her car at Franklin and Elmwood avenues. Parolee Jeffrey Scott Flannery, 39, was arrested in connection with the crash.
Flannery's arrest was the only one from those cases to date, but on Wednesday the Police Department identified a suspect in the killing of Jones. That suspect, Ramor "Yo-Yo" Black, 32, is wanted on suspicion of murder. Anyone with information is asked to call Stockton police Detectives Joe Silva or Tony DeSimone at (209) 937-8323.