SAN JOSE — A renewed cold-case investigation has led to the arrest of a Sacramento-area man suspected in a fatal 2012 shooting that ended a massive restaurant brawl in North San Jose, authorities said.
Dario Santana Trevino, a 43-year-old Roseville resident, was arrested Jan. 13 and booked into the Santa Clara County Main Jail on suspicion of one count of murder and two counts of attempted murder in a Feb. 26, 2012 shooting outside Carlos Goldstein’s, a now-defunct Mexican eatery on Murphy Avenue near Oakland Road.
Trevino is being held without bail, jail records show.
The shooting occurred less than an hour after midnight amid a fight that broke out and grew to involve more than 30 people, witnesses told this news organization at the time. By the time the melee had subsided, responding police officers determined that three men had been shot and a woman had been assaulted.
Two of the men who were shot were treated at the hospital and released; one had taken himself to get medical attention. A third man, 33-year-old Anthony Salazar, died at the hospital.
The shooter fled before police arrived, and San Jose homicide detectives did not immediately identify him. Police said that in 2017, Trevino surfaced as a potential suspect when an examination of a gun he used in a March 2012 shooting San Leandro — for which he was convicted — produced evidence linking him to the San Jose killing.
Last year, San Jose police detectives and the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office Cold Case Unit revived the investigation which “led to the positive identification of Dario Trevino as the suspect responsible” for the shooting in San Jose, officials said in a Monday news release.
In statements accompanying the news release, SJPD Chief Paul Joseph said “our detectives close cases regardless of how much time has passed,” and District Attorney Jeff Rosen said, “Cold cases aren’t always solved with DNA … Sometimes, it just takes good, old-fashioned tenacity and teamwork to get justice.”
Anyone with additional information for investigators can contact the SJPD homicide unit at 408-277-5283 or email Detective Sgt. Julien Taylor at 4257@sanjoseca.gov or Detective Catherine Van Brande at 4542@sanjoseca.gov. Tips can also be left with Silicon Valley Crime Stoppers at 408-947-7867 or at siliconvalleycrimestoppers.org.