MANCHESTER, NH – Angel Rivera Calderon told detectives he was driving to the house of a friend who had been shot early Sunday morning when he saw a man he suspected of being the shooter who, in turn, saw his car and started to run.
Calderon said he shot four or five times at the ground as the man ran “in order to scare him,” Detective James Pitman wrote in his affidavit on file in Hillsborough County Superior Court Northern District.
Calderon, 23, of 491 Maple St., was arrested Sunday after a police pursuit. He told officers he didn’t stop for them because he was heading to the hospital where his friend was taken after being shot that morning.
The wounded man, who was shot multiple times and who police have not publicly named, was taken to the Elliot Hospital, located on the east side of the city. Calderon was driving toward the West Side when he was stopped.
He is charged with numerous offenses including criminal mischief, for firing a gun at an occupied structure; falsifying physical evidence, for tossing a Glock 30 Gen4 .45 caliber gun out the window of his car as he was being pursued by police; seven counts of reckless conduct, for firing a handgun at 178 Cedar St., striking an occupied apartment building multiple times in a densely populated area of the city; driving after revocation/suspension, and disobeying a police officer.
Police investigated two shooting scenes that morning, one at 135 Chestnut St. where a man was shot multiple times, and the other minutes later at 178 Cedar St., where two cars and an occupied apartment building were sprayed with bullets.
Calderon was arrested in connection with the second shooting incident.
The investigation began at 4:48 a.m. Sunday when police were called for reported gunshots at 135 Chestnut St.
According to court documents, while responding to the scene, officers heard gunshots and saw a 2017 white Subaru WRX leaving the area where the second set of gunshots were heard.
Officers pursued the car as it headed to the West Side, eventually stopping it at the intersection of Granite and Canal streets.
Calderon was driving the car. Police promptly arrested him.
According to court documents, the car was brought back to headquarters where police saw a spent silver shell casing on the driver’s seat. It was consistent with a .45-millimeter casing.
In the alley behind 178 Cedar St., police recovered silver shell casings. Bullets, police said, hit a window and the door to the building.
Someone alerted police to a Glock .45 millimeter handgun on a sidewalk near the intersection of Auburn and Chestnut streets, on the direct path the police pursuit took place. It had an extended magazine inserted into it; the slide was in the locked back position, and both the chamber and magazine were empty, an indication the gun had been fired until it was empty, Pitman wrote.
Detectives recovered four, .45 caliber spent shell casings in the alley behind the apartment building which had five bullet holes in it that correlated with apartment four. They found a total of 11 bullet holes: five in the apartment building – two inside a bedroom; five in a vehicle parked outside and another one that struck another vehicle. Six people were inside the building at the time of the shooting.
Police also obtained video from the area that recorded the sound of 12 gunshots at the time of the incident.
Calderon was interviewed by detectives at the police station. Pitman, in his affidavit, said Calderon was deceptive in describing the route he’d driven to get to the scene of a Chestnut Street shooting after he was informed an “associate of his had been shot.”
He initially was also deceptive about not being in possession of a firearm during the incident.
Eventually, Calderon told investigators he cleans guns for his friends and that the weapon belonged to his friend, “J.M.,” which police matched the name on Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms’ eTrace.
He said he was driving to his friend’s house when he saw a man who he believed was the shooter and who simultaneously saw Calderon’s car.
That was when he shot the gun at the ground to scare him, Calderon told detectives.
He said he was driving toward his friend’s house when he saw blue lights behind him and tossed the gun out the window.
Calderon is being held in the Valley Street jail in preventive detention.
Both incidents remain under investigation.
Anyone with information about either shooting is asked to call Manchester Police at 603-668-8711 or leave an anonymous tip via the Manchester Crimeline.
