Steve Tausan, 52, a California Hells Angels gang member was shot & killed around 1PM on Saturday while attending a funeral for Jeffrey “Jethro” Pettigrew, the head of the club’s San Jose Chapter.
No one was arrested in connection with the shooting & the police say they have no suspects.
Amanda Mullen
A California Hells Angels gang member was shot and killed while attending a funeral for one of the fearsome biker crew’s leaders, who was slain in a casino shootout last month, police said.
Steve Tausan, 52, was gunned down at a San Jose cemetery at around 1 p.m. on Saturday as he and thousands of other Hells Angels members were grieving the death of Jeffrey “Jethro” Pettigrew, the head of the club’s San Jose chapter, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
He died later at a hospital, police said.
Pettigrew was shot and killed by an alleged member of the rival Vagos motorcycle gang during a brawl between the two crews inside a Reno, Nev., casino on Sept. 23.
Vagos member Ernesto Manuel Gonzalez was charged with Pettigrew’s murder, according to local reports.
Tausan, a bail bondsman who was nicknamed “Mr. 187,” the California penal code for murder, had told the San Jose Mercury News that he had received death threats following Pettigrew’s killing, that newspaper said.
No one was arrested in the shooting and police said they have no suspects.
Witnesses said they were shocked by the murder because Pettigrew’s funeral was crawling with cops.
“I’ve known Hells Angels and all the other groups for years and years and years, and there is a code of ethics,” witness Valerie Hoffman told the local NBC affiliate.
“You never do anything at a funeral. I mean that is just completely abominable.”
In 1999, Tausan was tried for murder in the savage beating death of a customer at a west San Jose strip club two years earlier, according to local reports.
He and the club’s manager were acquitted after a jury found they acted in self defense.
