SAN JOSE, CA - FEBRUARY 20: Police tape blocks off the scene of a shooting along Jackson Street in Japantown, in San Jose, Calif., on Saturday, Feb. 20, 2021. One person later died from their injuries and the incident was being investigated as a homicide, the fifth so far in 2021. Police also responded to two other unrelated shootings early Saturday morning one at 1900 block of Poco Way and another on the 500 block of West Alma Avenue. (Anda Chu/Bay Area News Group)
SAN JOSE — Two men have been arrested in connection with the 2021 killing of a man in downtown San Jose whose death was a mystery for several months before the coroner’s office declared it was a homicide, authorities said.
San Jose police officers were patrolling the area near Discovery Meadow off Woz Way on Sept. 13, 2021 when they found a man unconscious and not breathing, according to the police department. He was pronounced dead at the scene, but the cause and circumstances were not immediately clear.
In March 2022, the Santa Clara County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s Office ruled that 40-year-old Wayne Ham had been the victim of a homicide, police said. His listed cause of death was a combination of unspecified head trauma and drug toxicity.
A year-long investigation followed, and detectives identified 30-year-old David Angel Barraza and 37-year-old William Jack Jones, both San Jose residents, as suspects in Ham’s killing. On May 25, police arrested the two men in San Jose, and on May 30, Barraza was charged with murder and Jones was charged with being an accessory to murder.
Barraza is being held without bail in the county Main Jail, and Jones was being held at the Elmwood men’s jail in Milpitas in lieu of $115,000 bail. Police have not disclosed whether the defendants knew Ham or what motivated the alleged killing.
Anyone with information for the Sept. 13, 2021 homicide investigation can contact the SJPD homicide unit at 408-277-5283 or email Lt. Mike White at 4104@sanjoseca.gov or Detective Sgt. Ted Reckas at 3440@sanjoseca.gov. Tips can also be left with Silicon Valley Crime Stoppers at 408-947-7867 or at svcrimestoppers.org.
Originally published at Robert Salonga