During a court hearing Thursday, witnesses identified Alexander Martinez as the shooter in the April midday Mission District killing of a newly arrived Venezuelan immigrant.
The dispute may have started with a piece of bread.
In a video played in court, Martinez told police investigators that later, after he had jumped back in his car, his gun “just went off” when he pointed it at a pair of barbershop employees through his car window. He didn’t mean to kill anybody, he said.
“I didn’t kill nobody, man. I’m sorry,” a distressed Martinez could be heard saying to homicide investigators interviewing him in a white-walled room.
The testimony was shown during Martinez’s preliminary hearing, which is held for a judge to determine if there is enough evidence to proceed to a full trial. Martinez, the suspect, has pleaded not guilty.
Martinez, 30, allegedly parked between 19th and 20th streets on Mission Street near the Modern Hair Cuts barbershop in the early afternoon of April 5. He then proceeded to get into a dispute with two employees standing outside, and flashed his gun from his waistband. He allegedly threw bread at them, and one of them threw it back, according to an investigator.
Martinez then allegedly got into his car and fired his gun, aiming in the two employees’ direction.
Alberto Vargas Quero, 23, who had just moved to San Francisco and started his dream job as a barber that morning, was killed.
Martinez was arrested in Richmond several hours after the shooting occurred. In the interrogation room, Martinez appeared in disbelief. “What are we looking at right now?” he asked.
“Right now? You’re being arrested for murder,” one police investigator explained.
“It wasn’t supposed to fire off, it was supposed to scare them,” Martinez told investigators, insisting that he pointed the gun in the air and did not pull the trigger. “I don’t know how to explain it.”
Investigators weren’t convinced. They said Martinez had posted videos of himself on his Instagram stories that day, pulling a gun out of his waistband. Martinez confirmed he bought the weapon for protection about a month prior for $1,000 on the street.
“You weren’t scared of those two guys … you walked up to them and postured on them,” said an investigator from off screen. “You flashed a gun. You threw bread at him first. All he did was throw it back at you. And then you pulled out a gun and fired a round on him.”
This matched the testimony of Jose Ingrand Hernandez, another barber who had just met Vargas Quero and was training him on his first day.
Ingrand Hernandez testified today that Martinez became aggressive at him and Vargas Quero. The anger, he testified, came unexpectedly, as they were standing outside hoping to draw in customers. Martinez parked outside the barbershop around 1:30 p.m., went briefly to a bakery down the block, and then returned, Ingrand Hernandez said.
“He said, ‘What’s up, ni**a?’ and he just started looking for trouble,” Ingrand Hernandez said through a Spanish translator. He insisted that he and Vargas Quero never said anything back to Martinez — in fact, as he doesn’t speak English, he didn’t even understand much of what Martinez was saying.
“He threw some form of trash at Alberto and hit him here,” Ingrand Hernandez said, tapping his shoulder. “It hit Alberto, and then Alberto threw it back at him.”
Martinez then sat in his car for a few minutes, before driving several yards up Mission Street and turning partway into a nearby parking lot, Ingrand Hernandez said. Looking down the sidewalk toward where the two barbers stood, Martinez allegedly began firing his gun toward them through the window on the passenger side of his Ford Explorer. Surveillance video of the time of the shooting show the area was busy.
“I moved once he turned the truck on, because he looked suspicious to me,” Ingrand Hernandez said. “I was sort of looking toward the door.”
Once the gun started firing, Ingrand Hernandez said he turned and ran into the barbershop. Vargas Quero, who was further out to the curb, also ran, and caught a bullet on the way.
“Your testimony is that, for that 30 seconds to a minute, as he was saying things to you, you never uttered any words back at [Martinez]?” asked Martinez’s public defender, Semuteh Freeman.
“Ni una palabra,” Ingrand Hernandez said — not one word — and neither did Vargas Quero.
After the barbershop shooting, another witness testified that he saw Martinez speed into the parking lot, exit onto Capp Street and drive away.
Assistant medical examiner Dr. Jordan Taylor testified today that Vargas Quero had a gunshot wound entering his back and exiting his chest. The bullet, she said, broke Vargas Quero’s rib and perforated the arch of his aorta and both of his lungs.
She confirmed the gunshot wound was Vargas Quero’s cause of death.
Martinez’s girlfriend and other acquaintances were in attendance, while Vargas Quero’s family attended remotely from Colombia, where they live. One of the attendees had a mirror selfie of Vargas Quero as their profile image on the screen.
The hearing is expected to conclude tomorrow morning.
These poor public defenders. Their jobs are tough because criminals tend to be so stupid. This guy guns down someone and then agrees to sit down and talk with the police where he admits that he pointed his gun in the direction of the victim “to scare them” and the gun fired. And he posted videos of himself on Instagram the very same day pulling a gun out of his waistband. To boot, he thinks that if he says “it was an accident” he’ll go free. The only reason the public defender is bothering with the charade of a preliminary hearing, the outcome of which is clear, is to try to find something, anything, that might create some question and a result of a couple of decades in prison rather than life. Good luck with that . . .
I wonder why these people don’t just plead guilty and guarantee the couple decades rather than risk life.
Silly me, I thought America is where people come to be free. It’s incredible and ironic that some people will come to America to sell the freedom they dreamed of for a mere thousand bucks, especially when you consider that freedom is priceless.
Losers love threats . Lacking respect for others they see everyone as an adversary worthy of verbal and physical assault. They ” pack heat” ; should they be challenged or “disrespected” a Glock 9 can convince others to make way. Which works until it ends in a prosecution. They then are relocated to guarded facilities , places full of other losers who are similarly hateful ; where they , lacking guns , devise shanks.