More details have emerged about a homicide case we heard about Monday, at an apartment on the Great Highway in San Francisco. And now it seems there is a link between this homicide and the crazed carjacking suspect who was fatally shot by police in Daly City on Easter Sunday.
Bizarre crimes have been on the uptick during the pandemic crisis, even though overall crime has been down in San Francisco and elsewhere. And this case is sounding especially gruesome and strange.
As KPIX reports, a private investigator who was hired to look into the disappearance of 41-year-old Catono R. Perez says that Perez was last heard from on April 10, and his family reported him missing on April 20. The investigator, Jeff Kaplan, tells KPIX that the family had urged police to do a welfare check at Perez's home on the 1600 block of Great Highway, and inside they found body parts, and a severed head — presumably Perez's — in the refrigerator.
The SFPD and the SF Medical Examiner has not yet identified remains.
Meanwhile, the Chronicle is reporting via San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe, that 35-year-old Justin Silvernale, the Antioch man who allegedly stabbed an off-duty SFPD officer at a gas station in South San Francisco around 5:30 a.m. on Easter Sunday and was later fatally shot by police, was in possession of identification belonging to the Great Highway homicide victim, likely to be Perez.
Silvernale was reportedly attempting to carjack a vehicle at the gas station when the officer intervened and got stabbed, leading to the officer firing a shot at Silvernale and wounding him. Arriving South San Francisco officer tried unsuccessfully to shoot Silvernale with a Taser, and he then stole one of the officers' vehicles and took off toward the Kaiser hospital in Daly City. It was in the Kaiser parking lot that officers caught up with him and fatally shot him after he allegedly threatened the officers with a knife.
Police tell KPIX that is still premature to definitively link the two cases.
The timeline works out though — if Perez were last heard from on the 10th and was killed the night of the 11th, that would have been hours before Silvernale showed up at the South SF Chevron station trying to steal a car.
Related: SFPD Finds Dead Body Inside Great Highway Apartment Building