The first City of Healdsburg fireworks show in three years took place Monday night, illuminating the high school neighborhoods with flashes of light and the pummeling of explosion.
But the patriotism of the evening was muted by law enforcement actions both before and after the festivities—including a gunshot fatality on nearby Monte Vista Avenue at Lupine an hour after the big climax.
Just after 11pm, Healdsburg Police Department received several 911 calls “reporting a shooting in the 200 block of Monte Vista Avenue,” said the department in a press release early on July 5. “Officers responded and found an unresponsive male laying on the sidewalk. He was pronounced deceased on the scene.”
On Tuesday afternoon, July 5, Healdsburg police identified the victim as Luis Enrique Gonzalez, a 27-year-old resident of Windsor. Gonzales had previously been associated with gang activity; he was arrested in April, 2021 for a broad daylight knife attack outside the Healdsburg Community Center. Inquiries to the Deputy Attorney’s office for the disposition of that arrest had not been answered by press time.
The investigation of the Monte Vista crime is ongoing. At the scene, police knocked on doors to ask neighbors if they had heard anything into the early morning hours of July 5. Police Chief Matt Jenkins confirmed that there is an active investigation within the police department of the crime, led by Officer Jason Olvera. Anyone with information about the incident is encouraged to call Olvera at 707-431-3377.
“We’re still piecing together what led up to the shooting; that’s why we’re asking for anyone who has information to call us,” said Jenkins the next day.
The prevalence of both legal and illegal fireworks may have complicated public awareness of the gunfire. About an hour after the public show, the pyrotechnicians fired off several remaining fireworks that had been stuck in the mortars, said Jenkins. “They have to relight them so they go up and are no longer a danger.” The timing of that second wave of fireworks was close to the presumed time of the gun assault, which was first reported to police at 11:17pm.
Gun crime in Healdsburg is still relatively rare. Jenkins found 23 incidents in the past 10 years, since January, 2012. Homicides are even more rare; the most recent was in March, 2019, and prior to that in 2016—which itself was the first since 2008.
A couple hours earlier, at about 9:40, the fireworks program was just getting underway at the high school playing fields when a helicopter flying low over the residential area circled several times, sweeping a bright spotlight as if looking for something or someone. Chief Jenkins told the Tribune that the helicopter was the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office Huey-1, which had just responded to a vegetation fire in Cloverdale.
“It appeared that they circled Healdsburg after returning from that location, possibly to look for illegal fireworks that our officers were responding to,” said Jenkins. “However, we did not request their assistance, so I do not have specific information on what they were doing.”
Jenkins later clarified that any sworn office in the state has what’s called “peace officer powers,” which gives, among other things, the county Sheriff’s Office the authority to conduct such fly-overs without notice, even inside city limits. He thought that since the Cloverdale fire was presumably caused by illegal fireworks, the Huey was conducting a search for similar offenses in Healdsburg.
The helicopter left the skies of Healdsburg before the main fireworks display began.
The violence that ended the night of fireworks was especially disturbing, as it came on a day when a mass shooter in Highland Park, IL killed seven and injured 30 during an Independence Day parade. According to the public gunviolencearchive.org, it was one of 11 shootings in the country involving multiple victims on July 4, 2022.
