A 27-year-old man was walking near Colorado and Flint avenues in Stockton's Seaport District at about 10:15 p.m. when an unidentified person stepped up and demanded his property at gunpoint. He handed it over, turned to run — and the gunman fired a shot at him anyway.
The victim was not struck, according to police, as reported by CBS News. Responding officers located the suspected gunman and two other suspects standing in front of a nearby home. Police identified the three as Saience Vanhsy, 36, Jim Vanhsy, 40, and Ronny Kouiyoth, 39.
All three were arrested and booked on charges of robbery, assault with a deadly weapon and weapons offenses, per the outlet's report. Officers said they found a firearm on one of the suspects, and a subsequent search turned up the victim's stolen property along with additional illegal firearms.
A Pattern of Armed Confrontations in Stockton
This is not the city's only recent case of a robbery escalating into gunfire. In a separate incident, a 60-year-old man was hurt during an attempted robbery on a Friday night, when, according to FOX40, a second suspect pulled out a firearm and fired a round into the air before demanding the man's belongings. That victim suffered a non-life-threatening injury and declined medical attention, and both suspects in that case remained at large, the station reported.
FOX40 has also reported on another Stockton robbery that turned into an attempted homicide, resulting in the arrest of four people, including two teenagers. The Stockton Police Department has said it recovers an average of 700 to 800 illegal guns every year, a detail that underscores how often firearms surface during these street-level confrontations.
Crime Trends Show a Mixed Picture Citywide
The Seaport District arrest comes as Stockton's broader crime numbers have been trending downward in some categories. The city logged 1,684 total reported incidents in January and February of 2026, a 5.5% drop from the 1,782 incidents recorded over the same stretch in 2025, according to FOX40's analysis of city crime data.
Violent crime overall fell 12.5% year to date during that window, with 450 incidents compared to 514 a year earlier, the outlet reported, and homicides dropped 40%, from five down to three. Robberies specifically were down 3.3% year to date in early 2026, building on a steeper 25.8% decline in robberies during the first half of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, as previously reported by Stocktonia. Property crime also decreased 2.7% year to date, even as larceny and theft climbed 6.3% over the same period, per the FOX40 report.
