San Francisco Chronicle
Daly City police seeking suspect in pry-bar beating of elderly woman

John Coté, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, January 18, 2008

(01-17) 18:29 PST DALY CITY - Police are searching for a 28-year-old South San Francisco man suspected of savagely beating a 78-year-old widow inside her Daly City home and leaving her for dead after she surprised him during a robbery attempt.

The woman was upgraded today to critical condition at a local hospital after she suffered life-threatening injuries from being beaten in the face and head with a metal pry bar Saturday, Daly City police said.

They identified the suspect in the attack as Jose Perez-Gonzalez, 28, an illegal alien originally from Guadalajara, Mexico, who has been living in South San Francisco.

Perez-Gonzalez may be employed as a house painter in the San Jose area and may frequent exercise gyms in San Francisco during the early evenings, police said.

He has tattoos of a black-and-red Harley Davidson motorcycle emblem and a black dragon band on his right arm. He may also have "Mexico" tattooed in large letters running up his inner right forearm, police said.

Perez-Gonzalez - who has used the names Antonio Perez, Moses Omar Lopez-Padilla, Jose De Jesus Perez-Gonzalez and Juan Arellano - is also a suspect in the Dec. 21 burglary of a Pacifica home, Daly City police Lt. Jay Morena said.

Police did not say how they had focused Perez-Gonzalez as a suspect.

The Daly City attack came after the burglar had apparently telephoned the victim earlier in the day and posed as a package deliveryman in an effort to determine when the woman was going to be home, police said.

"This was not a random burglary," Morena said. But he added that police suspect the burglar tried to strike when no one was home.

"It was not a home invasion-type of burglary," Morena said. "The phone call was to find when she wouldn't be there."

E-mail John Coté at jcote@sfchronicle.com.

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