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Three men who had been drinking at a downtown Los Gatos bar found themselves surrounded by police after officers heard several gunshots coming from the direction of their vehicle.
After finding firearms in the car, police arrested one of the passengers for charges relating to possession and discharge of a gun. The man, 22-year-old San Jose resident Jason Burton, allegedly admitted to police he had fired his Glock into the ground to "show off" to friends.
According to a Los GatosMonte Sereno police report, Sgt. Joe DePrima was conducting a vehicle stop in the early morning hours of Jan. 23 when he heard shots coming from a car heading northbound on Winchester Boulevard.
Officers stopped the car on Lark Avenue, near Highway 17; the three men inside said they had no knowledge of any gunfire. Police searched the vehicle, however, and found two handguns on the front passenger seat and another in the trunk. The guns were an FIE Titan .25 caliber semiautomatic pistol, a Taurus .357 caliber revolver and a "freshly fired" Glock .40 caliber semiautomatic pistol.
Burton allegedly admitted to owning and firing the Glock. The gun, said Sgt. Kerry Harris, is expensive and modern in design, constructed of polymer plastic. "It's the caliber of gun that police officers generally use," Harris said, but is also common among nonlaw enforcement officers.
Burton was arrested on the charges of discharging a firearm in a grossly negligent manner, possessing a concealed firearm, possessing a loaded firearm and violating Los Gatos town code by firing a firearm within town limits.
Harris said the latter three charges are misdemeanors, while the first charge is a "wobbler"—discharging a firearm in a grossly negligent manner could be a misdemeanor or a felony, depending on the district attorney's preference.
The district attorney "will be looking at the whole context of the situation," Harris said, such as the location of the incident. There are "closely packed houses" on the west side of Winchester and some houses farther up on the hillside on the east, where the shots were fired, Harris said. "Certainly, there were many houses in the range of that particular gun," Harris said, explaining that the bullet could have ricocheted off the ground and "is capable of penetrating a window or a wall at a short distance."
The other two men in the car, a 23- and 24-year-old, both residents of Campbell, were let go. Both had been drinking, Harris said, but not enough to reach the point of intoxication.
Harris said there is no place for this type of crime in the community and that he thinks it is "just amazing the level of irresponsibility demonstrated by this guy."
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