Isla Vista – Two students and two alleged gunman are in the hospital with gunshot wounds after a shooting and assault in Isla Vista near the UC Santa Barbara campus one night before bringing back memories of a deadly rampage which rocked the seaside community nearly a year ago.
According to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office statement, Gunfire was reported just before 7:30 p.m. Monday at a home in the 6500 block of Sabado Tarde Road.
Investigators were recreating the happenings and said that 19-year-old Jose Guadalupe Gutierrez, of Goleta, and 22-year-old James Joshua Taylor, of Lompoc, went to the residence of two UCSB students who knew Gutierrez. An altercation ensued inside the home and police officers who were responding to an earlier call for “domestic disturbance”. The two students who were in their early 20’s sustained gunshot wounds in their abdomen and chest were taken to hospital and are expected to survive.
Residents had held Taylor after the altercation had ensued until the authorities arrived and took him to the hospital where he was treated for head injuries. Authorities said that Gutierrez fled the scene in a white sedan. He is being sought by law enforcement authorities overnight.
However on Tuesday morning deputies informed that Gutierrez checked himself into a hospital with injuries he said he got during a car crash on the UCSB campus. Police believes that the injuries could have been ones which he sustained in the altercation he had on Monday night.
Taylor has been charged with offences ranging from attempted murder, robbery and discharge of firearm in the commission of a felony causing great bodily injury. He is also charged for participating in a criminal street gang. Gutierrez has also been charged under the same provisions of law.
Santa Barbara County sheriff’s spokeswoman Kelly Hoover said, “We had a string of armed robberies last week in Isla Vista, several of them occurred in the same apartment complex and then one occurred randomly in the street. That definitely had everyone concerned, and we’re also heading into the anniversary of the Isla Vista mass murders, which everyone is already on edge thinking about the emotion of the loss that this community endured.”
Monday’s shooting brought back memories of Elliot Rodger who went on a killing spree and killed three UC Santa Barbara students in the apartment he shared with two of them. He went on with his murderous spree which left three other students dead and over a dozen hurt in Isla Vista on May 23, 2014.