Foresthill man sent to prison for shooting incident

A 32-year-old man has been sent to prison for two years in connection with an incident last July in which several shots were fired into the air from a moving vehicle in front of a Cal Fire station in Foresthill.

Joshua Trinidad Lemas of Foresthill received the sentence last week from Placer County Superior Court Judge Larry D. Gaddis after the defendant pled no contest on Feb. 9 to a felony count of being a felon in possession of a firearm and to a misdemeanor count of brandishing a firearm.

The incident occurred at about 2:40 p.m. July 27 on Foresthill Road when a Dodge Challenger was driven past the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection station and the shots rang out. Several Cal Fire employees were standing in front of the station and two young men on skateboards were also in the area.

No one was struck by the gunfire, and the vehicle fled east on Foresthill Road.

After law enforcement officers were summoned and began interviewing the witnesses, the Dodge Challenger was spotted coming back toward the scene. Officers pursued and stopped the vehicle without incident.

Arrested were the passenger, Lemas, who was nude and carried no identification, and the driver, Kerstin Lynn Moman, 20, of Foresthill. No weapons were found in the vehicle and a search of an area where a weapon may have been thrown yielded nothing, according to the California Highway Patrol, which conducted the investigation.

Moman, who entered a plea of no contest to a misdemeanor charge of possessing methamphetamine, was sentenced along with Lemas at the March 8 court proceeding. Judge Gaddis gave her 90 days in the Placer County jail and placed her on probation for three years.
Officials for the CHP and the U.S. Forest Service say the July 27 incident had no connection to another shooting only a day later in the Tahoe National Forest northeast of Auburn.

In that July 28 incident, a U.S. Forest Service employee who was installing signs in the area was in a vehicle when someone fired shots at him. He was not struck and he reported seeing three suspects. Forest service rangers and law enforcement officers searched the area but were unable to find the suspects.

That investigation remains open, a U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman said.