Norteño gang’s ‘most violent and prolific shooter’ sentenced to 30 years

SAN JOSE — Federal prosecutors describe 22-year-old Raul Coronel Suarez as the most violent member of the Salinas Acosta Plaza Norteños, a young man who participated in killings and commemorated one of them with a tattoo on his head.

The defense sees Coronel Suarez as the victim of a “disadvantaged childhood marked by parental abandonment, domestic abuse, poverty, and poor neighborhood conditions,” who was raised by the streets after adults in his life failed him and sucked into gang life at a young age.

But in the end, both sides agreed on one thing: the appropriate prison term for the young man was 30 years, enough to put him behind bars until the age of 47, factoring in credit for time served, according to court records.

Coronel Suarez was one of several SAP gang members who have pleaded guilty to shootings that targeted rivals and gang dropouts, and left victims dead or paralyzed. A federal sentencing memo describes him as “the most violent and prolific shooter among the Salinas Acosta Plaza Norteños in this case,” even as prosecutors also conceded that he didn’t personally kill any of the victims.

Authorities, though, say Coronel Suarez wounded at least two people while “participating” in six shootings, including four where he pulled the trigger. He allegedly assisted the man who killed gang dropout Jesus Garcia, then celebrated the murder by getting DOK — for “drop out killer” tattooed on his head.

The gang’s other crimes included three different homicides at a homeless encampment in Salinas, in 2020 and 2021. In 2023, members of the SAP gang allegedly threw a molotov cocktail into a plaza apartment in 2023, then broke in weeks later and spray-painted “SAP” and “f—– snitch” on the walls, federal prosecutors wrote in court filings. The gang started at the Acosta Plaza in the 1990s, before Coronel Suarez was born, and has been a law enforcement target ever since.

Coronel Suarez was raised by a “father and stepmother who chose not to feed or clothe him,” and suffered physical abuse throughout his childhood, according to a defense sentencing memo. He began spending his days on the streets of Salinas. At 13, while playing marbles, he witnessed a triple homicide. Later in his teens, a gang member welcomed Coronel Suarez into his home and gave him a place to live.

Both sides arrived at the 30-year prison term factoring all of this in; the harm caused by the six shootings, Coronel Suarez’s young age and his upbringing. By the time he comes out of jail in his late 40s, prosecutors say they hope “he will get himself on the right track and start contributing positively to society just as his victims had been trying to do,” according to a memo filed in court.