Carlito Montoya, 22, was arrested late Monday after he ran from the shooting scene at the Sports Corner Cafe bar, police Officer Michelle Gigante said.
Still armed with a gun, Montoya ran from the bar toward streets that were crowded with New Year's Eve revelers, police say. A fireworks display had ended just minutes before. Gigante said police immediately took Montoya into custody.
"They grabbed him very quickly and put him in the back of the car," said Diane Correia, who was having dinner across the street with her husband.
Afterward, police canceled a midnight fireworks show that was expected to draw as many as 40,000 people.
The pyrotechnics instead were detonated just after 8 a.m. Tuesday, startling residents of neighborhoods along the Sacramento River, according to the Sacramento Bee. Mike Testa, senior vice president of the Sacramento Convention & Visitors Bureau, told the newspaper the fireworks were armed with live charges and needed to be detonated for safety reasons.
Around 9:38 p.m. PST Monday, an argument inside the bar escalated into a fight and then into a shooting after a man brandished a gun. The shooting spilled out into the street.
"Before we know it, there was gunfire," said Correia's husband, Ray Correia. "And 'pop, pop, pop' and people were all ducking."
Gigante said a security guard at the bar, who was near a side door, heard gunshots, confronted the shooter and exchanged shots with him. Both were injured and taken to a hospital for treatment.
A 30-year-old woman, the 35-year-old man and bar bouncer Dan Ferrier, 36, were shot during the initial fight. The man, whose name was not released, and Ferrier died. The woman was shot in her lower body and is expected to survive.
Family and friends say Ferrier was filling in for another employee the night of the shooting.
"Helping someone out because that is the type of guy Dan was," said Tanya Cain, who was Ferrier's roommate for six years in Placerville, Calif. "If you needed someone to be there he was there."
Police are interviewing as many as 30 witnesses and recovered two guns from the scene, Gigante said.
Friends said Carlito Montoya is originally from Oakland, Calif., and recently moved to Sacramento. He was going to school to become a truck driver.
"He was trying to get his life straight," friend Joshua Sholz said.
Sholz said Montoya recently moved in with Sholz's brother in Sacramento. Both men were at the Sports Corner Cafe on New Year's Eve.
Outside Ferrier's home, candles were lit Tuesday in his memory.
"He was always said, 'Live every moment like it was your last' because he lost his parents very young," Cain said. "He always said you never know when it will be your last moment and God how true that turned out to be."
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