Sean Webby, swebby@mercurynews.com

Bolted closed, guarded Monday only by buckets of empties in the back, the Mexicali Club in San Jose wasn't giving up any clues about why three men ended up dead and one badly wounded after a Saturday night shootout there.

And neither were police.

Investigating the city's first triple homicide in five years, police on Monday did not identify the trio of dead men, one of whom was found a block away in an SUV. Nor did they add to the bare-bones details that came out after the shooting at the night spot on Old Oakland Road near U.S. 101.

Police said they would not release the names of the dead they had identified pending notification of their next of kin, some of whom may live out of the country. And they did not disclose any suspect descriptions.

"This case is very complicated, with lots of witnesses and lots of chaos," said Sgt. Ronnie Lopez, a department spokesman. "Information is coming in very slowly."

In a major city that usually has a comparatively minuscule homicide rate -- usually between 20 and 30 slayings a year -- triple homicides in the Silicon Valley metropolis are rare. In recent years, there have been three, all separate domestic multiple murders: one in 2005, and two murder-suicides in 2002.

The shooting reportedly began around 8:27 p.m., police said, with a call from a patron that a man with a gun was shooting his way into the club.

When officers arrived, they found a bloody scene: Three men down,

two dead in the club and one man who was found shot in the club's back parking lot.

Police said the survivor was in stable condition.

The next morning, a resident called police to report a black SUV Ford Explorer that was parked on 12th Street, about a block away from Mexicali. Inside was a dead man. Police connected the shooting at the club with the dead man in the parked vehicle.

Antonio Valencia-Alfaro Jose, who is listed as the owner of the club through A.V.A.J., was not at his South San Jose home and could not be reached for comment.

The slayings brought the city's 2011 homicide total to four. Last year at this time, there hadn't been a single homicide.

Contact Sean Webby at 408-920-5003

http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_17059306