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A 42-year-old Sunnyvale man was allegedly shot by his son in a possible case of mistaken identity in East Palo Alto early Saturday morning, according to police and the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office.
Officers responded to a ShotSpotter alert of gunfire in the 2100 block of Poplar Avenue near U.S. Highway 101 around 12:30 a.m. Saturday and found a man stumbling and bleeding on the street, according to police. He had been grazed in the head by a bullet.
Earlier Saturday, the man had gone to the home where his 26-year-old son, Marvin Ernesto Lopezico, and Lopezico’s two young children, ages 6 and 7, live in a backyard shack. Lopezico would not let the father in, the District Attorney’s Office said. The Sunnyvale man sat in the front yard drinking for a couple of hours while Lopezico was inside the shack allegedly drinking a bottle of whiskey and using cocaine.
At about midnight, Lopezico left the shack carrying a handgun and shouting “Who are you?” A struggle over the firearm ensued. The Sunnyvale man was shot in the head, and Lopezico went back into the shack, the District Attorney’s Office stated.
Responding officers, including three units from Menlo Park and a K-9 unit from Palo Alto, set up a perimeter around the area of the home, East Palo Alto Cmdr. Jeff Liu said.
Lopezico is charged with attempted murder, use of a firearm during a felony, battery on a peace officer, possession of a loaded firearm in public, possession of a controlled substance, personal use of a firearm and two counts of child endangerment. The child-endangerment charges are for having the two children in the home and the living conditions were substandard.
The older man is in stable condition and was treated at Stanford Hospital, Liu said.
Lopezico appeared in San Mateo County Superior Court in Redwood City on Monday, where a judge appointed him an attorney through the private defender program. He did not enter a plea and is being held without bail. The 26-year-old is scheduled to enter a plea and to set a preliminary hearing date on Sept. 23.
This is a very unfortunate situation. However, with regard to the reporting, it’s very substandard. How can a short article mention that the father was 42 years old so many times? I was thinking of subscribing. When the editing of the stories improves I may consider. Sorry, but not now.
@a subscriber?
I assume the writer mentions the 42 year-old’s age so many times because his name was not released, and both men involved in the case are described as ‘fathers’, so that was the distinguishing feature between the 26 year-old, who was named, and the nameless ‘father’, who was 42.
> Man shot in the head by his son in case of mistaken identity
> A 42-year-old Sunnyvale man was allegedly shot by his son in a possible case of mistaken identity in East Palo Alto early Saturday morning
Well, which is it, a case of mistaken identity, or a possible care of mistaken identity?
Possible? Not likely from the facts mis-printed here.
The location marker is wrong. It indicates 2000 block of Poplar. 2100 is on other side of Highway 101.
Sad what happened to this family. What surprised me is that finally something came out in the news because last shootings in EPA havent been reported.
Keep a gun in the home, and it’s 11 times more likely to harm a loved one than be used in self-defense.
No matter which side of the freeway the event occurred.
The gun did it! With these two clowns if there wasn’t a gun one of them would have got a knife. Knifes are stealthily, cheap, concealable and do not set off, “ShotSpotter.”
92% of domestic/family abusers were using alcohol. Out of those, 61% had substance abuse problems according to the Department of Justice.
I guess the liquor and illegal drugs had no play in this.
>> Keep a gun in the home, and it’s 11 times more likely to harm a loved one than be used in self-defense.
Hmmm, cold stats used to try to prove hot points …
Is it the gun that is the problem or that so many people are forced to live with and have in their lives “loved ones” who are not “loved ones”?
> A gun in the home is 11 times more likely to be used to harm a loved one than in self-defense.
> Is it the gun that is the problem…?
Perhaps not. Given that a gun is 11 times more likely to be used to harm a loved one than in self-defense, perhaps it’s the ability for over-emotional gun lovers to see facts so simply put.
Self defense – once
Harm a loved one – eleven times
And these guys can’t get their hand off their barrel long enough to see they are emotionally attached to something that logic tells us is clearly unsafe? Are they trying to make up for weaknesses in other areas?
Over compensate?
> Self defense – once
> Harm a loved one – eleven times
Those are the cold numbers, but they really do not go into the
facts of each of these cases.
Just once I’d like to see a journalist look at 11 cases where a
supposed loved one was harmed with a gun by their other
supposed loved one, and of course what the one self-defense
incident looked like too.
I think there are a lot of really sick, dysfunctional, mean, and
unbalanced people … by 11 to 1 in the world, in this country,
than healthy individuals.
Is that the problem then? There are so many more maladjusted,
dysfunctional families and relationships then there are responsible
gun owners who own weapons to defend themselves?
Depending on how you look at it, it would be even more of a danger
to realize how many of those maladjusted people take their mental
problems out on others. Is it good that they harm their own loved
ones or should they harm innocent strangers?
We have a violent, sick society based on dehumanizing other people
and lying and tricking them and stealing from them. Again, maybe
thinking that guns are the whole of the problem is superficial thinking.
By the way I do not now and never have owned a gun, but under
certain circumstances I would like to have the freedom to get one
if I ever deem it necessary.
The point is those statistics are always twisted by both sides of
every issue to try to influence how we look at different issues, and
of course our predisposition to not think, and to rely on feelings and
confirmation bias is powerful. It is so easy to turn down what other
people are saying or even find clever ways to insult them than it is
to wonder what information is missing, and what statstics really mean,
and what a fair reaction should be.
Also … by the way, that is not math, that is not logic, that is not
modeling … that is simple arithmetic based on you don’t know
what statistics.
The US does not keep or at least does not disseminate the stats
on things like this. I remember when Michael Brown was shot
by the police officer in Missouri we all found out there was no
central place where police shootings were reported and studied.
Why do people settle on these fake second hand reports and
numbers that none of us know where the came from or how they
were gathered or interpreted?
Maybe look a the neighborhoods or socio-economic factors
of these shootings because this is not just a question of
arithmetic.
Alcohol, drugs, weapons, mistakenly shot, living in a shack, etc. A real upstanding family with everything going for them.
It’s always the Guns fault. Never the person. Wonder how many Cars killed people today, or how many Doctors killed or maimed their patients.
Alcohol, drugs and guns are a dangerous mix.