What’s next for Stockton after the mass shooting? It is trying to figure that out
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- Community leaders, volunteers and officials organized vigils and aid efforts.
- Advance Peace funding cuts left former staff volunteering to reduce violence.
- City officials pursue job creation, port investment and public safety responses.
Nuri Muhammad received the alert for a vigil on Sunday afternoon, a day after a mass shooting at a Stockton-area birthday party killed at least four people, including three children.
He attended the vigil. He didn’t have to think about it.
Muhammad, 58, lives in Stockton and has been active for several years in violence reduction efforts locally. He was a program manager for Advance Peace Stockton, which worked with gang members, before that organization lost most of its funding earlier this year due to federal cuts.
For Muhammad, the issue is personal. He said he started violence reduction work to try to help his son, Yusef Muhammad. Nuri was worried about his teenage son’s involvement in gun violence. He didn’t make it. Yusef was gunned down in Stockton in August 2023 at 25.
Without a job now with Advance Peace Stockton, Muhammad volunteers his time. On Sunday, he attended the vigil organized by Faith in the Valley.
“It should be a part of the protocol of when things transpire, when the families are asking for support and they’re doing vigils, I think it’s a good thing for the community to all kind of get around that family,” Muhammad said.
Stockton, about a 50-mile drive south from Sacramento, continues to deal with the aftermath of the mass shooting, which also left 13 wounded. Police have not made an arrest yet, fundraisers have been established for victims’ families and the building where the shooting occurred may never reopen.
The city had already dealt with its fair share of trouble over the years. But people like Muhammad do what they can with whatever resources they have to make it better.
‘An overwhelming support network’
Bob Gutierrez remembered the conversation with his parents after another horrific shooting in Stockton, at Cleveland Elementary School in 1989. It left five children dead and 30 more children and a teacher wounded. The gunman took his own life.
Gutierrez, who is now 46 and the interim president and CEO of the San Joaquin Partnership, has lived most of his life in Stockton.
He loves Stockton, but he also remembered his parents telling him after the Cleveland Elementary shooting about the importance of staying safe and being mindful of what was going on around him.
Gutierrez had a similar conversation with his teenage sons this week.
But he also remembered the “overwhelming support network,” he said, that surfaced following the Cleveland Elementary shooting. “One of the things I’m grateful for about this community is that people don’t sit on the sidelines,” Gutierrez said. “They actually jump in and say, ‘How can we help?’”
Julian Balderama grew up in Stockton and said that, following his brother’s killing when Balderama was 15, his life became “an endless cycle of violence and incarceration.” He was involved with the Norteños gang and eventually wound up at a camp at Pelican Bay State Prison for possession and trafficking.
Balderama was paroled in December 2017 and soon became involved with Advance Peace Stockton. He wanted to turn his life around in part for his children. He worked six years for Advance Peace Stockton before being laid off in March after funding cuts. He subsequently enrolled in truck driving school.
Like Muhammad, Balderama still volunteers for violence reduction work. He was quickly alerted Saturday to the shooting. “Even though I’m not employed, I immediately jumped in my car and I went to the hospital,” Balderama said. “Because the people that were involved, I know a lot of them while working there.”
Details of Saturday’s shooting are still emerging, though signs show it was possibly gang-related. Muhammad said members of two street organizations — he dislikes using the word “gangs” — the Muddy Boyz and the Flyboys were among the victims.
Families attended the party, Muhammad said. He also said that Jasmine Dellafosse, an activist he’d worked extensively with had been at the party, was shot and had been through several surgeries.
“Now that this incident is done, I think everybody is focused on the retaliatory measures that always come after violent incidents such as this,” Muhammad said. “And we’re just trying to ease some tensions and to service the people.”
Others step in
California State Sen. Jerry McNerney, D-Pleasanton, who has a district office in Stockton, spoke at Faith in the Valley’s vigil on Sunday. Dwight Williams, a Stockon faith leader who helped organize the vigil, said about 200 people attended.
Assemblymember Rhodesia Ransom, D-Tracy, whose district includes Stockton, also spoke at the vigil. “I cannot just sit back at home while folks are trying to figure it out,” Ransom said.
Mayor Christina Fugazi, who was elected last year and served eight years on Stockton City Council, spoke at the vigil, too. Earlier in the day, she was in contact with a White House adviser who sent a playbook for mayors for the first 24 hours following shootings. This playbook includes instructions on how to interact with victims and media.
“This isn’t something I ever in my wildest dreams thought that I would (be) having to be able to deal with,” Fugazi said.
Fugazi emphasized that the mass shooting appeared to be isolated.
“Our Police Department and the Sheriff’s Department and the partnering agencies and the district attorney, we’re doing everything possible to keep the residents of Stockton safe,” Fugazi said.
Heather Brent, a spokesperson for the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office declined to make personnel available for interview, saying they were focused on the case.
Lora Larson, who heads up the city of Stockton’s Office of Violence Prevention, declined to be interviewed.
Stockton’s struggles — and charm
The shooting happened in the 1900 block of Lucile Avenue in an unincorporated pocket of north Stockton. The area feels working class and contiguous with the city. Michael Blower represents a Stockton City Council district with a boundary across the street from the shooting site.
“That’s not a bad area at all,” Blower said. “Now, crime can happen anywhere, but that’s not an area that I would have expected something like that.”
Stockton gets a bad rap sometimes and some of it might be deserved. The city endured a well-documented bankruptcy in 2012. Parts of downtown are blighted, as are other nearby areas. On Monday, dogs roamed near a west Stockton street that has had trouble with gang activity. Asked while he sat in his garage if he felt safe living there, Victor Anding replied, “Hell no.”
Still, the city has its charms and people who defend it. Blower works as a real estate broker. He sometimes gives what he calls his “Stockton 101 tour” to people. “I can’t tell you how many times people have started out where they had heard bad things, maybe about Stockton,” Blower said. “By the end of the tour, they’re like, ‘Wow, this is really a nice place.’”
The city has amenities such as the Bob Hope Theatre – a historic, former Fox movie theater downtown – and near the waterfront, an arena for the Stockton Kings of the NBA G-League and a ballpark for the Stockton Ports, the Single-A affiliate for the Athletics.
The city is also resilient, as former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs, who is running for California lieutenant governor, told The Sacramento Bee this week.
“I oftentimes say, I wish we didn’t have to be so resilient all the time, Tubbs said. “There’s a resilience and a fortitude that comes from being in a community that has experienced such hardships.”
For those who can accept Stockton for its faults or even the danger it can present, the area can be a place of opportunity, even rebirth.
Antonio Vargas has managed an apartment building in downtown Stockton since 2021 where, he said, there used to be “a bunch of craziness.” He said that has improved. Still, when people ask Vargas what the area is like, he replies: “How’s your energy? It all depends on your energy.”
Vargas is from Southern California and struggled before coming to Stockton. Many years ago, his cousin, who had been 10 years in recovery at the time, invited him to Stockton and helped him clean up his life. Vargas said he’s been sober since 2012.
“This is my paradise,” Vargas said.
Where Stockton goes from here
Stockton can draw people in, from real estate that’s more affordable than the Bay Area or Sacramento to commercial or industrial possibilities.
Port of Stockton director Kirk DeJesus said Tuesday that he had a call that morning with Robert Andrews, director of ship building for the National Security Council. DeJesus, Fugazi and others are interested in bringing ship building back to the port, something they say has happened there historically.
The port’s pitch, in part, is that it has about 400 available acres. The water is also 35 feet deep. While that’s not deep enough for container ships or aircraft carriers, DeJesus said the potential draw is for small-market ships like frigates or mine sweepers. Discussions with the NSC, which would help facilitate work for international clients, is still preliminary, DeJesus stressed.
“There’s probably, I would say, 100 or so locations in the United States that could do it,” DeJesus said. “They’re trying to determine what’s the best fit. They would like to get something west of the Rocky Mountains.”
Ransom said while the potential for shipbuilding was “definitely huge,” she would be meeting later in the day with a group about job creation and getting people out of poverty. “We want to be able to also cut down on the unemployment rate and we want to give those folks that are returning home from incarceration opportunities to get employed,” Ransom said.
Economic stability could be critical for helping prevent future shootings in Stockton. Muhammad cited studies by the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform that offered insight into people prone to gun violence.
“They’re about 24, 25 years old, usually a male, out of work,” Muhammad said. “High propensity not to have a high school diploma. They live in dangerous neighborhoods where they don’t feel safe. They have access to weapons. They are generally fathers. And there is a large contingent of functional homelessness.”
Some, such as Tom Patti, a former San Joaquin County supervisor who lost the mayoral election to Fugazi last year, are not hopeful about Stockton’s future. “This is a very sad reflection of a growing epidemic — gangs and drugs,” Patti said. “I don’t see a bright horizon as this continues onward.”
Williams, who is pastor of New Genesis Outreach Ministries of Stockton, is more optimistic. “We’re one of the most diverse communities in the nation,” Williams said. “Stockton has all the tools necessary to tackle these issues.”
Balderama said that if he wasn’t hopeful for Stockton’s future, he wouldn’t be involved in violence reduction work.
“Stockton’s a beautiful place,” Balderama said. “I know that it has a bad name and this is definitely not going to help the reputation of Stockton. But I believe the way that everybody’s coming together and the way that we’re going to bounce back from this can renarrate the story for our city.”
This story was originally published December 4, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
