Gang war rips San Jose.

Byline: J. Gutierrez Krueger TRIBUNE REPORTER

Nightly gunfire terrorizes neighborhood, but residents vow to stay put

When it's dark, she can hear the bullets, the squeal of tires, the sirens.

Last Wednesday, one of those bullets shattered the 84-year-old woman's front window, ripped the new blinds she had just put up.

"It was 5 a.m.," said the woman's daughter, Susan Romero. "She was asleep and it was dark. She heard a car putting on the brakes so fast and then the shooting. She was afraid to turn the lights on. She was afraid to call the cops."

She and others in the San Jose community are under siege, caught in the crossfire of what Albuquerque police say is a major gang war.

"It's a violent, very violent thing going on down there," Sgt. Jeff Ferner, supervisor of the Albuquerque Police Gang Unit, said of the community south of Downtown. "I feel really sorry for the people in that neighborhood. The whole neighborhood seems terrified by this."

But not terrified enough to leave the homes they have dwelled in for most of their lives.

And members of both San Jose and the nearby South Broadway neighborhood associations, all long recognized for their efforts to clean up their communities, say they are ready to fight back again.

"We love our area," said Gloria Candelaria, president of the recently revitalized South San Jose Jack Candelaria Neighborhood Association. "Gangs or no gangs, we are here to stay."

The war begins

Albuquerque police say this recent turn of violence in the San Jose …