First La Mesa Homicide Victim in Five Years May Have Been in Shootout

Joe Flaherty doesn’t know how a San Diego teen came to die behind his Marie Callender’s early Saturday morning. But Flaherty, owner of the Alvarado Road restaurant since September 2009, thinks it may have come in a shootout.

La Mesa police are still investigating the city’s first homicide since November 2006, says police Lt. Dan Willis.

According to Flaherty, police found 25-30 shell casings over a wide area of the parking lot behind his restaurant—plus a large bullet hole in a 12-by-15-inch window of the rear room used by several service clubs, including La Mesa Sunrise Rotary.

But late Tuesday afternoon, Willis said 25-30 shell casings was “nowhere near accurate and is a gross exaggeration.”  And he wouldn’t comment on the significance of the shell casings.

Police used plastic tape to cordon off an area behind Marie Callender’s—only yards away from the San Diego city limits. Officers tried “to piece together what happened,” Flaherty, 46, said Tuesday afternoon.

He said indications were that it was a “back-and-forth exchange” of gunfire. His restaurant didn’t have surveillance cameras outside, he said, but police asked to see tapes shot from inside.

Nobody was in the restaurant when the shooting occurred, he said. The first two employees arrived at 6 a.m., and Flaherty was informed about 6:30.

Flaherty, a San Diego resident who lives near Lake Murray, notified the restaurant chain’s headquarters in Mission Viejo—so it knew not to worry if press reports reached it.

“It bothers me that something like this could happen in our community—especially in our parking lot,” said Flaherty, who bought the restaurant from the retiring previous owner after 15 years as manager.

Lt. Willis added details about the Saturday morning incident, which ended the longest city period without a homicide in his 25-year career—a stretch of 1,987 days going back to Nov. 20, 2006.

“The victim was found [by associates] in his car, which was parked in the rear parking lot behind Marie Callender’s, towards the northwest corner,” Willis said. 

He was then driven to the hospital, where he first came to the attention of authorities. Police then backtracked to the location of the shooting.

“The people who drove the victim’s car with the victim inside to Kaiser [Zion Medical Center in San Diego] were known to the victim, but we are not releasing their names or the nature of their relationship at this time.”

The San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office, meanwhile, has yet to release the name of the slain man, who police said was a black 19-year-old resident of San Diego.

Willis said hospital staff called the San Diego Police Department early Saturday morning, since they didn’t know at the time where the shooting occurred.

“After talking with people who had driven the victim to the hospital, it was determined the shooting occurred near the border between La Mesa and San Diego near the 6800 block of Alvarado Road,” Willis said. “SDPD and La Mesa officers searched the area and discovered the shell casings behind Marie Callender’s.”

La Mesa police aren’t saying how many casings they found or commenting on any other evidence, Willis said.

But he said six patrol officers and one sergeant responded that night, and La Mesa Police Department investigators were later called to the scene.

He said no suspect or suspects have been identified.

The last homicides recorded in La Mesa were June 17 and Nov. 20, 2006.

“The June 17, 2006, case occurred at 4755 Acadia Ave., where a male was killed with a sword inside his residence,” Willis said.  “That case is unsolved and open.”

The November 2006 case was the subject of a 3,100-word account in the San Diego Reader in July 2008—about the spousal abuse alleged by Geraldine Meyers, who was sentenced to a 40-year prison term after being convicted in the shooting death of her 30-year-old boyfriend, Demetrious Warren, at the apartment they shared at 7272 Saranac St.

Meyers, now 50, is serving time at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla—a Central Valley town between Fresno and Merced.