Suspect Arrested In Fatal Sunnyvale Shooting Following Fender-Bender; Had Arsenal Inside Car
SUNNYVALE (CBS SF) -- New details from a fatal shooting in Sunnyvale over the weekend indicate a motorist was shot dead by another driver following a minor collision, police announced Monday.
The Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety said officer responded around 4:25 p.m. Saturday to a report of a shooting near the intersection of Homestead Road and Linnet Lane and found a man shot dead inside a vehicle and a woman with a non-life-threatening gunshot wound.
Investigators determined the victims were involved in a minor crash with the suspect and when the male victim pulled over to exchange information, the suspect immediately fired several rounds into the victim's vehicle with a handgun.
Police identified the suspect as Jason Tahara, a 23-year-old San Jose resident. He was found in San Jose about three hours after the shooting Saturday and arrested by San Jose police. During the arrest, officers observed a suspicious item in Tahara's vehicle near a propane tank. A bomb unit was sent to the scene as precautionary measure but no explosives were found, police said.
Sunnyvale DPS served a search warrant on the vehicle and found two tactical style rifles, loaded high capacity rifle magazines, a tactical style external body armor vest, two handguns with loaded high capacity magazines, over 200 rounds of handgun ammunition and over 200 rounds of rifle ammunition in the vehicle.
On Sunday a search warrant on Tahara's San Jose home on the 1100 block of Krebs Court yielded several tactical rifle parts, police said. It's believed Tahara was possibly building and modifying tactical style rifles in his home. Investigators also found the handgun used in the shooting, which was not registered and has no serial number.
Tahara was booked into Santa Clara County Jail on murder and attempted murder charges.
Anyone with information about the shooting wa asked to contact Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety Detective Ben Holt at (408) 730-7143 or bholt@sunnyvale.ca.gov.