Skip to main content

Armando Jose Rodriguez alleged local leader in the Norteños and may have decided which of the gang's enemies would be targeted for violence.

Armando Jose Rodriguez, 32, was shot Tuesday at 1:48 p.m. as he was visiting someone near a food truck on Illinois Street between 24th and 25th streets, an industrial area. The gunman shot Rodriguez several times, then ran down the block to a white Ford Mustang driven by another suspect, investigators said. Police have made no arrests and have given only a vague description of the killer.Police sources said Rodriguez was a local leader in the Norteños and may have decided which of the gang's enemies would be targeted for violence. Police say they are gearing up in the Mission District and elsewhere for possible gang retaliatory attacks in response to his killing.The Norteños, or northerners, are based in Northern California and have ties to the Nuestra Familia prison gang. Their main rivals, the Sureños, or southerners, were originally based in Southern California and grew out of another prison gang, the Mexican Mafia.The Mission District, where the Norteños and Sureños are concentrated locally, has been the scene of eight homicides since the beginning of August. Police believe that several of those killings were the result of warfare among Latino gangs. After three men were fatally shot the evening of Sept. 4, police increased the number of beat officers on Mission Street and added car patrols to other parts of the neighborhood.Rodriguez, known as "Chappo," was free on bond stemming from a drug case filed last year, court records show. San Francisco narcotics officers and federal agents raided a home on Revere Street in May 2007, found a marijuana-growing operation and arrested Rodriguez and three other men.
Rodriguez's attorney in the case, John Runfola, had no comment Thursday about his client's slaying.Around the time of the San Francisco raid, authorities searched a home in Vacaville where Rodriguez was living with his wife. Offices allegedly found a gun there, prompting federal prosecutors to file charges against him.Rodriguez could have been sentenced to 10 years in prison under federal law had he been found guilty of being a felon in possession of a firearm. He had a felony accessory conviction stemming from a 2001 bar fight and stabbing on Cortland Avenue, police said. That case was originally charged as an attempted murder, but was resolved with the lesser charge.Rodriguez also had a conviction for being a felon in possession of ammunition, records show. That felony charge grew out of the May 2007 raids in San Francisco and Vacaville. Members of Rodriguez's family have declined to talk about his killing. His defense lawyer in the federal case, Randy Montesano, said Rodriguez had jobs and was married, with children, and was never accused in court of being associated with any gang.Montesano called the federal weapons case against Rodriguez "marginal," saying his client did not have the long felony rap sheet typical of people charged under the weapons possession law.
He called Rodriguez a "stand-up guy" who was "very respectful, polite, courteous."
"It's unbelievable," Montesano said of Rodriguez's killing. "I don't know whether he got caught up in something."
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Timothy “Fuzzy” Timms, a 45-year-old member of the Hells Angels Motorcycle club, stood up Monday for his First Amendment right to freedom of expressi

Timothy “Fuzzy” Timms, a 45-year-old member of the Hells Angels Motorcycle club, stood up Monday for his First Amendment right to freedom of expression. Timms, a resident of the San Diego community of South Park, refused to take off a black leather vest with the motorcycle club's “death's head” insignia when he reported for jury duty. He's a big burly man, 5 feet 8 inches, 250 pounds, with a full beard and auburn-colored, shoulder-length hair. At 7:45 a.m., Timms' stance got him booted from the San Diego Superior Court's Hall of Justice by sheriff's deputies, along with another Hells Angel who also refused to remove his insignia vest. Nine hours later, representatives of both the Superior Court and the sheriff's department apologized to Timms and club member Mick Rush for “misunderstanding” an order issued April 24 by Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Fraser. Rush also had been reporting for jury duty. “It all boils down to a misunderstanding of Judge Fraser'
Post a Comment
Read more

Rashawn and Deon Beneby Someone mowed down the brothers, some 15 yards apart, on a grassy strip

''They may have been into drugs but they didn't do anything to harm anybody,'' said their aunt, Cheryl Watkins. ``It was cold-blooded murder to lay them out like that.''Miami-Dade County's 80th and 81st homicides of 2008: Rashawn and Deon Beneby, brothers and suspects in a string of violent robberies, shot dead Thursday afternoon next to the Liberty City middle school they once attended. ''It's cold-blooded, outright killing out there -- and we're not even in the summer yet,'' said the Rev. Richard Dunn, a community activist who lives three blocks away. Witnesses said a group of men were gathered outside an apartment at the Annie Coleman Gardens housing project when the shooting started.Someone mowed down the brothers, some 15 yards apart, on a grassy strip next to the chain-link fence that separates the community from the baseball field at Charles R. Drew Middle School, 1801 NW 60th St. Rashawn was executed -- shot in the head an
2 comments
Read more

Jorge “Rivi” Ayala, Griselda Blanco, aka the Black Widow

Rivi was, for a time, the hit-man of choice for Griselda Blanco, aka the Black Widow. Griselda was the grande dame of the Miami cocaine business, a Colombian mother of three, of impoverished origins, who slaughtered and intimidated her way to the top of a billion-dollar industry. She is a central character in this movie, the most deadly figure in a story in which the bodies are stacked like dominos. Conspicuous by her absence as an interviewee, she is one of the few key survivors of the era whom the film-makers were unable to coax before the lens. “Her release was imminent at that point, as was her deportation. I think she has changed her mind since, because we have been reapproached,” Corben says. contract killer Jorge “Rivi” Ayala, the director of Cocaine Cowboys Billy Corben says: “He told me where there is a body buried in Miami, by the Florida turnpike. It’s all developed now, malls and condominiums. He knows where all the bodies are buried. We told the police. I think he told the
6 comments
Read more