Napa County Superior Court — Venue of Preliminary Hearing and Trial Ruling
A Napa County judge has ruled that there’s enough evidence to send Bryan Gomez to trial for murder in the shooting death of Salvador Hernandez, a 20-year-old Concord man found dead beside Monticello Road northeast of Napa last year. Gomez pleaded not guilty to murder and a special allegation of lying in wait to kill, and he remains held without bail in the Napa County jail, according to Napa Valley Register.
Judge Mark Boessenecker made the ruling after a preliminary hearing that began October 29, finding that enough evidence exists to put the 23-year-old Vallejo resident on trial, according to The Napa Valley Register. An earlier report from the same paper had described Gomez as 22 years old, and the discrepancy in his age has not been resolved in court filings. The victim has also been identified in different records as both Salvador Hernandez and Salvador De Jesus Castillo-Hernandez, a 20-year-old resident of Concord, according to CBS News.
A Night That Ended on a Rural Roadside
Prosecutors built their timeline using GPS, cellphone and security-camera data, laying out a detailed account of September 13, 2025, the night Hernandez died. According to the Register’s reporting on the district attorney’s case, Gomez drove his girlfriend’s Toyota Camry to pick up Hernandez from his Concord home between 8:25 and 8:27 p.m., then drove Hernandez and his girlfriend to his own home in Vallejo at about 8:57 p.m…