Warning calls, helicopter wake residents to tense, noisy morning

Hours after the helicopter and its spotlight departed, after the police officers came and went in search of homicide suspects, Andre Ganjeh tried to get back to normal.

As he trimmed weeds in front of his Sunny Park Drive home, he recounted how the northeast Modesto neighborhood came under siege early Monday.

"You want to know what kind of night I had?" Ganjeh said. "At 4:30 a.m., I had 15 SWAT members in my house."

He was among the residents who allowed police to search their homes and yards for the people suspected of killing two men near Coffee Road and Floyd Avenue. About 3,300 other residents also received recorded telephone calls starting at 4 a.m., warning them to stay inside and lock their doors.

Ganjeh, 34, said he was inside his house when he heard what is believed to have been a gunshot fired by a suspect at a police car just down his street.

He said the officers who searched his house were abrupt but effective.

"It was pretty intense," said Ganjeh, a landscaper and personal trainer. "Those guys don't mess around."

On Temescal Drive, a couple of blocks to the west, Nestor Sander, 94, woke about 2:30 a.m.

"I saw these lights flashing in my back yard, so I went to the back door and shouted," he said. "They said it's the police, so I opened the door. They asked me to go outside, and they came in and got muddy footprints all over my house. They said they were looking for some bad guys. They didn't mention murder to me."

Sander, a retired paleontologist, said his cleaning woman will take care of the police footprints on the white carpet.

"They messed me up, but they did a good job," he said. "As long as they caught the guys, that's what matters."

Armando Diaz, 39, said he heard the helicopter about 2 a.m. after arriving home from a shift at a Frito-Lay warehouse. He then monitored news reports about dawn.

He and his wife, Bobbie, 41, waiting later in the day to pick up daughter Nicole at Orchard Elementary School, agreed that the heavy police response was justified.

"Me being ex-military, that's something you want to do," Armando Diaz said. "You want to make sure nobody is trying to get out."

A woman who called 911 about a suspicious truck, which turned out to be the one sought by police, said officers responded professionally.

The experience nonetheless was "horrible," said the woman, who declined to be identified out of fear for her safety.

"My mouth was dry," she said. "My heart was beating fast. I've never had that happen. It's a nice neighborhood."

Bee staff writer Sue Nowicki contributed to this report.

Bee staff writer John Holland can be reached at jholland@modbee.com or 578-2385.

This story was originally published August 31, 2009 at 11:32 PM with the headline "Warning calls, helicopter wake residents to tense, noisy morning."