After seeing her friend and colleague Harry Mathis at the mayor\u2019s State of the City address on Jan. 11, District 1 City Councilwoman Sherri Lightner announced her shock upon hearing that Mathis \u2014 a longtime San Diego civic leader and current chairman of the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System \u2014 his wife, Mary, and a neighbor were victims of a violent home invasion and robbery that very night. “He was at the State of the City last night, and I was talking with him,” Lightner said to La Jolla Town Council trustees at their Jan. 12 meeting. “We left there at the same time. Little did I know that in a half hour he was at home shooting at someone.” According to San Diego Police Lt. David Rohowits\u2019 police report, a 78-year-old male \u2014 identified as Mathis by neighbors \u2014 was parking his car in the garage of his University City home just after 9 p.m. when a man accosted him, demanding cash and wielding a handgun. Mathis, who carried a concealed handgun, fired two shots at the suspect \u2014 neither of which were believed to have hit the suspect. The attacker then gained control of Mathis\u2019 handgun, struck him on the forehead and ordered him inside the home, where Mathis\u2019 wife and a neighbor were being held by two other male suspects in masks. After the suspects searched the home for money, they lit fire to Mathis\u2019 car in the garage and fled the scene. “I was in tears this morning, but he is fine,” Lightner said at the meeting. “He is at home, and the police are aggressively pursuing the folks who did this to him and his wife, Mary.” The San Diego Police Robbery Unit and Metro Arson Strike Team (MAST) are currently conducting the follow-up investigation. Anyone with information about the crime is asked to call the Robbery Unit at (619) 531-2299.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After seeing her friend and colleague Harry Mathis at the mayor\u2019s State of the City address on Jan. 11, District 1 City Councilwoman Sherri Lightner announced her shock upon hearing that Mathis \u2014 a longtime San Diego civic leader and current chairman of the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System \u2014 his wife, Mary, and a […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11560","_seopress_titles_title":"Community leader victim in violent UC home invasion","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11560,11551,11593],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-294769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-la-jolla-village-news","category-news","category-no-images"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294769\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}