MANTECA — Police believe gang members were behind the shooting of a 56-year-old man in front of his house on Friday, April 4, the second gang-related shooting in as many weeks.

At about 8:30 p.m., someone threw a rock through the window of Robert Casanova’s house at 303 Vine St. When he stepped outside to see who it was, Casanova was shot in the thigh.

“He stood up right there and shot me from 10 feet away,” Casanova said Thursday, April 10, after returning from the hospital. “He had this look on his face like he didn’t want to be there.”

The shooter, an Hispanic man about 19 years old, left in a silver Honda with several other people, according to Casanova, who owns a landscaping company.

Casanova was taken to San Joaquin County Hospital for emergency surgery on his shattered femur and was released Wednesday night.

Recovering in a wheelchair on Thursday, Casanova said he believed the attackers meant to hit one of his two sons, who are 17 and 18 years old.

Some of his sons’ friends wear gang colors, Casanova said, but he claimed that neither of them were gang members.
“Their friends that are gang members, they’re not allowed around here,” he said. “Maybe I had to get shot for my sons to realize how serious this is.”

Police spokesman Rex Osborn said the nature of the shooting and its location — a block from crime-afflicted Southside Park — also led investigators to believe it was gang-related.

There is no information about the shooter, and detectives were unable to get any witness reports.

Osborn said Casanova has been “less than cooperative” with investigators, and described him as having “some gang knowledge,” though he is not on police records as a documented gang member or associate.
Casanova bristled at the suggestion that he was hiding something.

“Let me shoot you in the leg and talk to you an hour later and see how much you want to talk,” he said, adding that he didn’t trust police to fully investigate the shooting.

Casanova believed his attackers were the same people behind a March 25 shooting on Center Street that sent a 19-year-old to the hospital.

However, police so far have been reluctant to declare a connection.

Detectives were unable to recover shell casings or the bullet that went through Casanova’s leg, so they could not determine whether the same weapon was used in  the earlier shooting, Bricker said.

Yet another shooting on Sunday, April 6, which police believe was unrelated to Friday’s attack, left two men with non-critical injuries.

Both victims were documented gang members, police said, but the shooting does not appear to be a gang dispute.
Detectives are still sorting through varying accounts of the shooting, which occurred during a late-night gathering on the 2000 block of Falmoth Circle, Osborn said.

At about 1:30 a.m., one of the men showed up injured at a nearby stranger’s house asking for help. The residents called 9-1-1 and he was taken to a local hospital.

Police found the other man in an abandoned home nearby.

There have been no arrests for any of the shootings.