A Half Moon Bay man has been sentenced to 12 years in state prison for shooting a victim sitting inside a car near the Moonridge Housing Community in January 2024, closing out a case that included a mistrial, a deadlocked jury and a last-minute plea deal. Orlando Montelongo-Chavarin, who was 18 at the time of the shooting, pleaded no contest to felony assault with a firearm and admitted a firearm-use enhancement that added 10 years onto his sentence.
San Mateo County sheriff’s deputies were dispatched at around 7:09 p.m. on Jan. 20, 2024, to a report of a shooting near Tea Road and Pear Orchard Way, according to a San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office news release. Deputies found a male victim who had sustained gunshot wounds and was taken to a hospital for treatment. Coastside News later reported that the victim survived after receiving treatment at Stanford Hospital. Montelongo-Chavarin was arrested one day later, on Jan. 21, 2024, after a warrant was issued for his arrest and he was located and taken into custody without incident, the sheriff’s office said.
Prosecutors alleged Montelongo-Chavarin repeatedly shot the victim while the victim sat inside a car during what they described as a gang-related incident, according to Coastside News. Prosecutors said Montelongo-Chavarin asked a 14-year-old acquaintance to shoot the victim, but the acquaintance refused, and Montelongo-Chavarin instead fired multiple shots before fleeing to a former friend’s home. Prosecutors also said he later confessed to the shooting and told others he believed he had killed the victim. The Moonridge housing community, a development for farmworkers at 2001 Miramontes Point Road, lost power during the shooting because of stormy weather, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported at the time. The sheriff’s office said its preliminary investigation led detectives to believe the shooting was an isolated incident.
Gang Allegations and a Disputed Victim Characterization
Prosecutors alleged Montelongo-Chavarin was a Sureno gang member and that the victim was a former Sureno who had joined the rival Nortenos, per the same Coastside News account. But Jose Becerra disputed that characterization of the victim in an email to the outlet, saying the victim had never been a Sureno or a former gang member. The dossier does not resolve which account is accurate, and both versions remain part of the public record on the case.
The January shooting was not treated as an isolated event once investigators connected Montelongo-Chavarin to two earlier shootings the previous fall. Authorities identified Montelongo-Chavarin and another suspect, John Neves, 19, in connection with gang-related shootings that had rattled Half Moon Bay, according to CBS San Francisco. That outlet reported the two shootings occurred on Oct. 21 near Cypress and Pilarcitos avenues and on Oct. 23 near Willow and Pilarcitos avenues, and that neither incident injured anyone. The earlier incidents, which involved gunfire at or near vehicles, prompted the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office to hold a two-hour public forum for residents, Coastside News reported separately.
Charges, a Mistrial and a Deadlocked Jury
Taken together, the three shootings resulted in 15 criminal charges against Montelongo-Chavarin, including 14 felonies, with prosecutors filing special allegations involving firearm use, gang activity and great bodily injury. Montelongo-Chavarin pleaded not guilty to all of the charges and denied the accompanying special allegations in September 2025. Months earlier, in February 2026, a court dismissed 12 felony charges connected to the October 2023 shootings for insufficient evidence, according to San Mateo County Superior Court records, while charges tied to the January 2024 Moonridge shooting remained pending.
A 23-day jury trial on the remaining Moonridge-related charges ended on Oct. 15 after five days of deliberation. The jury deadlocked on the attempted murder and shooting-at-an-inhabited-dwelling charges, prompting Superior Court Judge Rachel Holt to declare a mistrial on those counts. The jury did, however, find Montelongo-Chavarin not guilty of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Plea Deal Leads to 12-Year Sentence
Following the mistrial, prosecutors reached a plea agreement with Montelongo-Chavarin, under which the attempted murder and shooting-at-an-inhabited-dwelling charges were dismissed. He pleaded no contest to felony assault with a firearm and was sentenced to 12 years in state prison, with an additional 10 years ordered for admitting the firearm-use enhancement. He received 1,163 days of credit for time served and conduct credits. A restitution hearing has been scheduled for Dec. 8.
Montelongo-Chavarin had previously pleaded not guilty to all charges in the case, per earlier Coastside News reporting. Nicole Lambros, the defense attorney, said she had no specific comments on the case but asked that Coastside News note Montelongo-Chavarin was 18 years old at the time of the shooting, the same age identified in other accounts in the record. The article was authored by Ashton J. Hacke for Coastside News.
