Jun 24, 2008

Triple slaying shocker

Officials search for possible getaway car in North Fair Oaks homicide

By Shaun Bishop and Michael Manekin / Bay Area News Group

A midday shooting Monday that left three men dead at a house in Redwood City's unincorporated North Fair Oaks neighborhood spurred a countywide search for three people seen speeding away from the bloody scene.

San Mateo County Sheriff's deputies found one man lying in a driveway and two others inside the house on the 500 block of Stanford Avenue at 1:26 p.m., four minutes after the shooting was reported.

All three men had died of apparent gunshot wounds by the time officers arrived, said Lt. Marc Alcantara of the sheriff's office.

Witnesses saw a light-blue Honda with a male driver and two female passengers speeding away from the scene, Alcantara said. Investigators did not name any suspects or a possible motive for the killings.

The sheriff's office was still trying to identify the victims Monday and described them as Hispanics in their 20s and 30s.

Friends and family identified one of the dead as Manuel Guzman Reinaga, a 26-year-old gardener.

Dozens of sheriff's deputies, detectives and other officials milled around for hours in a blocked-off section of Stanford Avenue as they waited for a search warrant from the district attorney's office allowing them to canvass the house.

Alcantara said although the responding officers found the two bodies inside the house immediately, they had to leave the premises until the search warrant was issued around 4 p.m.

A few sheriff's deputies peered over fences of neighboring houses looking for anything suspicious and interviewed neighbors who were confined to their front yards. Bystanders on the other side of the police tape climbed on wrought-iron fences and craned their necks for a view of the scene.

Mark Norman, who owns Galaxy Cabinets Inc. just a few hundred feet from the crime scene, said he walked out of his business right after the shootings to see one of the victims lying in the blood-stained driveway.

Norman said he has seen drug deals in the neighborhood and fancy cars parked in front of the house where the shooting happened.

"There was always a lot of s--- going on down here," Norman said. "This is three doors down from my work. This has got me nervous, man."

Baffled relatives of Reinaga, one of the victims, paced the crime scene, waiting for an official to explain what had happened.

They described him as a family man with an easy smile and no enemies, a gardener who owned and operated his own landscaping business to support his wife and 1-year-old son.

"He was a good man, a worker. I don't know why this happened to him," said Moises Reinaga, 34, the victim's brother, his eyes red-rimmed from crying. "It could have been that he was at the wrong place at the wrong time."

Jesus Reinaga, the 13-year-old son of Moises, recalled his uncle as a nice guy who often took him along to mow lawns on landscaping jobs and occasionally played soccer with him.

"I feel like crying, but the tears don't come out," he said.

Manuel Guzman Reinaga is survived by his brother Moises and four sisters, two of whom stood among the dozens of officials and passers-by as they waited for answers Monday afternoon.

"I still don't know what happened," said Erika Reinaga, 26. "I didn't think he had problems with anyone."

Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office at 650-363-4911 or the anonymous tip line at 1-800-547-2700.



E-mail Shaun Bishop at sbishop@dailynewsgroup.com.