At 5:43pm Tuesday, San Jose Police Sgt. Matt Walsh and his 10-person tactical team had their suspect – wanted for two weekend armed robberies in the Tambien Park neighborhood – cornered at San Jose and Pomona Avenues.

Then the stolen bronze Chevy Tahoe broke loose, bouncing off parked cars in a wild five-minute chase through neighborhood streets, losing its police pursuers.

The big SUV – filled with items stolen at gunpoint from a bank parking lot on Aug. 22 and a shopping center parking lot on Aug. 23 – slammed to a stop against parked cars at Goodyear and Lick Avenues. The driver – 39-year-old Anthony Chavez, armed with a silver handgun – grabbed some loot and headed into backyards, jumping a fence and into the back door of a stranger’s home.

A vigilant Air Three police helicopter led Walsh’s Mobile Emergency Response Group to the house, where the tactical squad quickly rescued a man and two children.

Within minutes, Chavez fired his silver handgun when Walsh, leading the way, crashed through a bathroom door. Chavez was killed by police gunfire that followed. Walsh, with two wounds from gunshots that missed his vest, walked outside and calmly asked for a ride to the hospital.

Walsh, a 19-year veteran of the San Jose Police Department, was reported in stable condition this evening. Chavez was pronounced dead at the scene.

That’s the dramatic narrative recounted today at an afternoon press briefing by San Jose Police Chief Paul Joseph – 12 minutes of terror that broke the serenity of an August night, ending with a flash-bang grenade and shots in a small bathroom.

“I’ve watched the body-worn camera of that gunfight in that small bathroom, and what unfolded in that extraordinary confined space was chilling,” Joseph told a roomful of reporters and cameras. “ What was equally striking was Sgt. Walsh’s composure after being shot – he continued communicating and directing his team.”

The police chief praised the courage, diligence and professionalism of his officers, from Walsh’s courage and leadership to the MERGE unit’s rescuing of potential hostages to the detectives who pored over license plate reader videos to the helicopter crew that spotted the fleeing felon.

But Joseph also noted that Tuesday’s mayhem was the second officer-involved shooting of 2026, that Walsh was the 15th city police officer to be shot or shot at in the last five years and that San Jose officers take about 1,000 illegal firearms off the streets every year.

Then there’s the system.

The San Jose police chief told reporters that Chavez had committed four armed robberies in 2011, and was sentenced in 2016 to 23 years in prison.

Then he was re-sentenced, and paroled last year.

In April, six months after he was released on parole, a San Jose police officer spotted Chavez driving a stolen vehicle that had been taken in a residential burglary, Joseph said.

He said Chavez was then released  – over the objection of Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen. A warrant was issued for Chavez’ arrest when he didn’t report for a GPS monitoring ankle bracelet and didn’t show up for his court date.

“Chavez should have been in custody, but instead he was out committing the robberies… and he shot Sergeant Walsh,” said Joseph.

His sentiment was echoed by San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan. “I sincerely hope that everyone in our criminal justice system thinks harder about how we ensure accountability.”

And by Rosen, who issued this statement today:

“Our hearts are with the officer as he recovers from this shooting. Our prosecutors and investigators are, as we are tasked to do, hard at work evaluating this event.

“We can, however, conclude something right away: This long-term criminal should never have been free to commit more crimes and violence against anyone, let alone one of San Jose’s finest.

“We objected to his release. The laws on bail are rapidly changing, making it harder to keep even dangerous defendants behind bars. However, judges still have important discretion in weighing the risk of releasing repeat serious criminal offenders. We join members of our community and law enforcement in reminding judges that the stakes are – as this case illustrates – literally life and death.”

Three decades of journalism experience, as a writer and editor with Gannett, Knight-Ridder and Lee newspapers, as a business journal editor and publisher and as a weekly newspaper editor in Scotts Valley and Gilroy; with the Weeklys group since 2017. Recipient of several first-place writing and editing awards, California News Publishers Association.