GILROY
A man who tried to stop two men from burglarizing his car was beaten with a baseball bat, police said.
At 12:09 a.m. Sunday, a man on the 7700 block of Santa Theresa Drive in west Gilroy came out of his house and saw two men trying to break into his vehicle, Sgt. Jim Gillio said. Threatening to hit them with a bat, police said he told one of the men to get on the ground and wait while he called police.
However, one of the two would-be burglars snuck up on the man, took hold of him and struggled with him, Gillio said. The men wrestled away the bat and hit the vehicle’s owner with it several times.
The man managed to call 911, but the men fled before police arrived, Gillio said. However, police stopped several people near the scene of the crime and one of them matched the description of one of the two suspects.
Police arrested Joseph Julian Nunez, 19, for felony battery with serious injury and possession of a deadly weapon – the bat – Gillio said. Nunez said he lived in Gilroy but did not have an address.
Police did not know whether the incident was gang-related or drug-related and had no initial indications of it being so, but were investigating those possibilities anyway, Gillio said.
Anyone with information on this crime can call inspector Doug Remmick at (408) 846-0350.
