It started in Starbucks: How row over coffee shop control sparked worst Hells Angels war for a decade



It all started over control of a Starbucks coffee shop.



But a turf war between a Hells Angels chapter and a rival California motorbike gang has escalated to become the deadliest clash between the biker groups in almost a decade.



The growing toll of casualties, that includes almost a dozen dead or wounded between the San Jose Hells Angels and Los Vagos biker groups, makes the clash the worst since 2002.



Deadly: The latest biker wars are ranked by law enforcement as the most severe clash of the San Jose Hells Angels and the Vagos biker groups in nearly a decade (stock photo)

The spate of violence turned deadly last month when the head of the San Jose Hells Angels' chapter was shot dead.



Jeffrey 'Jethro' Pettigrew, 51, president of the San Jose, California, group, was killed and one Vagos member was wounded in the melee at John Ascuaga's Nugget hotel and casino in Sparks, Nevada.

A second Vagos member was wounded in a drive-by shooting the next day at a motorcycle rally.

The Pettigrew killing -- coming 11 months after a gunfight between the two gangs in Arizona that left five people wounded -- in turn sparked tensions within the Hells Angels' ranks that led to yet another death in California, authorities say.



'There have been concerns about this rivalry for some time," said Graham Barlowe, resident agent in charge of the Sacramento office of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The recent bloodshed can all be traced to last year's push by Vagos, founded in the 1960s in a Southern California desert community, into the northern coastal town of Santa Cruz, long claimed as Hells Angels territory, police said.



Tensions boiled over in January 2010, when members of the rival gangs, some wielding ball-peen hammers, fought outside a Santa Cruz Starbucks.



'It was all about who would be allowed to hang out at the Starbucks downtown,' Santa Cruz Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark said. 'The Vagos brazenly came in and tried to cement their presence. It was a pretty strong play on their part to establish themselves as the premiere club.'

He added: 'Only in Santa Cruz would you have biker wars over who's going to control pumpkin spice lattes.'

Seven months after the Starbucks ambush, violence between the two groups flared again in a gunfight in the northern Arizona town of Chino Valley. that left five people wounded and led to 27 arrests.

The last California biker feud of similar proportions grew out of a 2002 casino riot in Laughlin, Nevada, between the Hells Angels and another group known as the Mongols, Barlowe said. At least three bikers died as a result of that conflict.

Gang rivals: Los Vagos member Ernesto Manuel Gonzalez , right, is accused of the murder of Jeffrey "Jethro" Pettigrew. Hells Angel Cesar Villagrana, left, was with Pettigrew when he was shot

The latest casualty of the Hells Angels' recent battle against Vagos actually was inflicted by one of their own.



At Pettigrew's funeral in California his close friend and sergeant-at-arms of the San Jose chapter, Steven Tausan, 52, was shot and killed by a fellow Hells Angel in an apparent quarrel among club members.



A police source said Tausan and others confronted the accused gunman, Steve Ruiz, over his perceived failure to have protected Pettigrew during the Nugget casino brawl, prompting Ruiz to pull a gun on Tausan.



A group of bikers then pounced on Ruiz as thousands of mourners streamed out of the cemetery, preventing police officers at the funeral from making an arrest, San Jose police spokesman Jose Garcia said.

In the end, it was unclear whether the bikers who descended on Ruiz did so to subdue him, beat him or help him escape, but witnesses said he was whisked away in a car, Garcia said.



Suspecting that Ruiz may have been killed at the scene and his body dumped into Pettigrew's grave, police later obtained a search warrant to dig up the burial site, but they found no trace of Ruiz.



Last week, San Jose police received a tip that Ruiz was alive and hiding out in the northern California city of Stockton, but he was believed to have slipped away after investigators searched a home there.



Garcia said authorities now believe Ruiz is on the run with a current or former girlfriend, noting that he has family and associates in Arizona and New York.



Gangsters: The turf war originally broke out at Starbucks, Santa Cruz, last year

The U.S. Justice Department has classified both the Hells Angels and Vagos as outlaw gangs involved in drug and weapons trafficking, as well as extortion and money laundering.



The Hells Angels, by far the larger and better known of the two groups, was founded in 1948 in Fontana, California. The organization denies its involvement in criminal activity.

