Fresh out of federal prison, alleged Richmond gang member charged with murder

Jose Ismael Serrano, 41, was released from a 17-year prison sentence just four months ago, in a case where he and other Sureños were said to have taken over an elderly woman's apartment and turned it into a full blown drug house.

RICHMOND — The 41-year-old suspect in a recent shooting death has been identified as a member of a Bay Area gang that in the mid 2000s allegedly took over an 84-year-old woman’s San Francisco apartment and transformed it into a drug house.

The suspect, Jose Ismael Serrano, was released from a 17-year federal prison term last December. On the morning of March 27, Richmond police say he went into a home on the 300 block of South 36th Street, angrily demanded to know where a family member was, then fatally shot her male companion, 20-year-old Antjuan Webb Jr.

Police haven’t pinpointed an exact motive other than Serrano’s apparent disapproval of Webb associating with Serrano’s family member, authorities said. Serrano was quickly identified as a suspect, spent several days on a federal hold until Contra Costa prosecutors filed murder and gun possession charges against him. He remains in Santa Rita Jail in Dublin pending a transfer to the jail in Martinez, records show.

In 2007, Serrano was convicted in federal court of possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine, and sentenced to 17 years in federal prison. The charge stemmed from a drug arrest in 2004, but the following year Serrano was implicated in a more serious crime — taking over the elderly woman’s home with several other gang members.

The woman, an 84-year-old San Francisco resident named Helen Gutierrez, had been diagnosed with dementia and was powerless to stop the 19th Street Sureño takeover of her home. In court papers, prosecutors say the group ate meals that were delivered to her, posted lookouts for social workers and cops and stored drugs, guns and ammunition in her apartment. Eventually, police got wind of what was going on and raided the place.

“Used condoms and evidence of narcotics usage littered the floors and Ms. Gutierrez’s personal belongings and home decorations were tagged with blue Sureno gang graffiti like ’19th Street Monstas.’ When police came to rescue Ms. Gutierrez, the gang members tried to run,” then-Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Brigid Martin wrote in a 2007 sentencing memo, which added that Serrano did not flee the scene and was arrested in a bathroom, a few feet from a .32 caliber pistol.

A defense sentencing memo, also filed in 2007, gives some insight into Serrano’s early life. He has spent most of his life in prison, started using cocaine and heroin as a teenager and “could not help but be affected by the constance presence of drugs and gangs” due to his upbringing in Richmond and San Francisco, Assistant Federal Public Defender Daniel Blank wrote in the filing.

“Subsequently incarcerated from a young age, Mr. Serrano has had little opportunity to learn how to survive without resorting to the criminal behavior to which he was exposed,” Blank wrote. “Rather than simply being dismissed as having no redeeming value, Mr. Serrano should instead be viewed in this unfortunate context.”

Serrano has not yet been arraigned on the murder charge. Police say he was identified by multiple eyewitnesses and through a review of video surveillance in the area.