By NEAL PUTNAM
A July 27 trial date was set April 19 for a man suspected of using a ghost gun to kill a parking valet and wounding four others in an incident in which he claimed he thought people were laughing at him.
Witnesses testified in a two-day preliminary hearing in which Travis Sarreshteh, 33, was ordered to stand trial on charges of murder, four counts of attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, and domestic violence with his girlfriend.
“He said ‘Are you guys laughing at me?'” said Vincent Gazzani, a tourist from New Jersey in his 20s. “That’s when the event happened.”
“I lost my spleen, my lung collapsed, part of my stomach they had to remove,” said Gazzani, who was shot in the arm and in the back while walking with some friends in the Gaslamp area.
Chris Luciano was walking his dog on April 22, 2021 at 10:30 p.m. when he said he saw Sarreshteh shoot and kill Justice Boldin, 28, an Ace parking attendant.
“He fired two to three shots initially and then after [Boldin] hit the ground, that’s when he turned around and shot him again,” said Luciano.
“How was he moving after the shooting?” asked Deputy District Attorney Jessica Paugh.
“Like nothing even happened. Very cold,” said Luciano.
Steven Ely, now 69, a retired teacher, said he was walking to a club where his musician son was playing for the first time since it opened during the pandemic. He was some distance away when he was shot in the abdomen.
“I didn’t think someone was running around with a gun–that was the last thing I thought,” said Ely, who said a bullet went through his pancreas and is still lodged near his spine.
Paugh told San Diego Superior Court Judge Theodore Weathers the gun jammed and Sarreshteh could not fire more shots. She said “intent can be inferred,” and successfully argued Sarreshteh be ordered to stand trial on all counts.
Also wounded were Alexander Balis, Jatil Kodati and Kevin Kania.
Two people on the street tackled Sarreshteh and held him down before 10 police officers showed up and arrested him. Officer Christian Reda testified he punched Sarreshteh for “pain compliance” to get him to put his hands behind his back to be handcuffed. Reda took the gun from his waistband.
Ted Mansour, a District Attorney’s investigator, testified he interviewed Sarreshteh’s girlfriend who said he choked her by placing his hands around her neck in two incidents in 2020.
“Mr. Sarreshteh told her he was worried about world events,” said Mansour. “That was the reason he had a gun.”
Paugh and Sarreshteh’s attorney reached a stipulation in court in which they submitted an analysis of Sarreshteh’s blood sample that showed he has traces of methamphetamine and amphetamine in his system.
Sarreshteh pleaded not guilty when he appeared before Judge Michael Groch on April 19.
It isn’t known where Sarreshteh obtained the ghost gun which could have been stolen or ordered from a company that manufactured it without a serial number.
Ely was interviewed on KNSD (Channel 7) about ghost guns after the County Board of Supervisors and the San Diego City Council voted to ban possession of them.
“The manufacturers of these guns are selling them to crazy people like the guy who shot me and four others. I don’t like that,” said Ely. “That is insane, and it leads us to the Wild West.”
— Neal Putnam is a local court reporter.
