SAN JOSE — A renowned South Bay soccer coach, whose roots go back to playing for a forerunner of the San Jose Earthquakes, is speaking publicly for the first time about a violent clash in June inside his Almaden Valley home where he fatally shot his longtime friend, former teammate and coaching colleague.

Dave Gold has been cleared of criminal liability in the death of Ronald Morriss. Now he wants to detail his experience to the wider public, particularly the local soccer community in which he has spent most of his American career, after spending months being confronted with rumors, innuendo and conjecture about what happened between him and Morriss the night of June 6.

“A lot of people hate me. They think I’m an evil man. We have the same friends, players that played with us. I get it,” Gold, 69, said in an exclusive interview with The Mercury News. “I understand I took a life. You know, he’s my oldest friend. … We coached together, played together. It hurt me that I couldn’t get the truth out.”

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According to Gold’s telling, Morriss was staying at his home, as he often did when his marble and tiling business brought him to the Bay Area, since Morriss lived in the San Luis Obispo County town of Templeton. Morriss had been drinking heavily, Gold said, prompting an argument, and eventually he asked Morriss to leave the house. Gold’s girlfriend was also home at the time.

Gold said that led Morriss, 69, to threaten his life before heading upstairs to pack his bags. On his way back down, Morriss tripped on the stairs, which Gold said prompted Morriss to start aggressively moving toward him. 

“Then he goes, ‘No, I’m going to kill you. I’m going to kill you now,’ ” Gold said.

While Morriss was upstairs, Gold had armed himself with a small revolver that he put in his pocket. Gold offered two reasons for this: He had undergone spine surgery, limiting his mobility; and four years ago, he was severely beaten by Morriss at the same home, but declined to press charges to keep his friend out of trouble. 

Dave Gold in his home on Monday, Sept. 8, 2025, in San Jose, Calif. Gold, a renowned South Bay soccer coach who played for and coached an early incarnation of the San Jose Earthquakes, is speaking publicly for the first time about a June shooting at his South San Jose home that killed his friend and longtime coaching collaborator Ronald Morriss. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group) 

On the night of June 6, Gold said, he showed Morriss the gun and pleaded with him to leave.

“I pulled the gun out, and I said, ‘Look, just leave. I don’t want to hurt you. I can’t fight you. I can hardly move,’ ” Gold said. 

Gold fired into his living room wall as a warning shot, which he said further enraged Morriss.

“He just rushed me … he’s on top of me, and he’s pummeling me, and I just let go, pull the trigger,” Gold said. “I wasn’t looking where I was shooting. It was just a defensive reflex.”

Gold continued: “The main thing I want people to know is I had no choice, that one of us was going to die. It was either me or him. I really thought I was dead.”

Three bullets from the revolver penetrated Morriss’ torso.

There was never a doubt in Gold’s mind that he was defending himself, but he was initially arrested. Then he was released from jail.

Over the summer, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office declined to file charges against him, telling this news organization in a statement: “After a thorough review of the facts and the applicable law, we declined to file charges. The evidence is insufficient to overcome the legal standard required to disprove a claim of self-defense.”

In late August, Gold got an official notice from the San Jose Police Department that the six days he spent in jail was only a detainment, meaning that for legal purposes, he was never arrested.

But being cleared from authorities’ suspicion was something that Gold expected would eventually happen. He is now turning to reclaiming his name and place in the community. First, he must grapple with the fallout with the friends and family of Morriss, the latter of whom has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit over the shooting. Gold and Morriss were teammates on the Earthquakes in the 1980s, after they emigrated from England, and Morriss served as an assistant coach for Gold in the intervening years.

Paul Van Der Walde, the attorney representing Morriss’ survivors, said they are not convinced of Gold’s story and question whether deadly force was truly necessary.

“There are few circumstances where you can kill somebody who is hitting you. You also have to look at what other options are available,” Van Der Walde said in an interview. “Why did he go get a gun? Was that reasonable? Or was this just setting it up where the only thing that was going to happen was someone was going to get shot?”

Given that the only living witnesses to the shooting are Gold and his girlfriend, and the fact that authorities have cleared Gold, Van Der Walde acknowledges that producing a counterfactual to Gold’s account will be challenging. But he said he hopes that taking depositions from them and reviewing investigative records as part of the litigation will shed more light.

He added that establishing an imperfect self-defense scenario could pave the way for civil liability even if it spared Gold from criminal consequence.

“It doesn’t pass the smell test for me,” Van Der Walde said. “There shouldn’t be a dead person.”

Gold is also trying to rebuild his livelihood; he temporarily lost his coaching license in the wake of the shooting, though that has since been restored. 

He also lost his coaching position with the Santa Clara Lions, a youth-soccer team that he had been a part of for several years. It was among several coaching jobs in the professional and amateur ranks that he has held in the past three decades, including stints with Real San Jose and the pre-Major League Soccer incarnation of the Earthquakes.

Gold said he has filed a state labor complaint about his termination from the Lions, which he called unfair, given that he was always legally innocent. The Lions did not return messages seeking comment in time for this story’s publication deadline.

Jairo Rubalcava, whose son was coached by Gold for about four years, described Gold as a generous mentor who consistently raised the level of the team. Like other soccer parents, he said he was sad when he heard about the shooting, but that Gold’s swift release from jail suggested to them that it was not what it seemed.

Now that Gold has been cleared, Rubalcava said he would gladly welcome his return to the team.

“Our team, our kids who have been with him for years, we want him back,” he said.

Kristen Saham, another parent whose son played under Gold, lauded the coach’s positive effect on his son’s physical and mental toughness. She recalled the difficulty of trying to navigate the news of the shooting and separating fact from fiction.

“When it came out that it was self-defense and there were no charges and he wasn’t being held, that just made more sense to us, because that’s more of the Dave that we know,” Saham said.

Before finally telling his story, Gold had to see and hear rumors that ranged from the shooting occurring amid a massive party being held at the home, to Gold leaving the fight, then retrieving a gun from his car and shooting Morriss. The misinformation poured out in part because of the void left by the absence of official reports — the lack of charges meant almost all investigative information was legally shielded from public view.

Above all, Gold said he wanted to remind the public that he is also in mourning over the loss of a man with whom he had been friends for 50 years, and who he called the best soccer player he ever played with. He said this while pointing to various spots in his living room, which is adorned wall-to-wall with framed photos and trophies from his lifetime in the sport. It’s the same room where the shooting happened.

“He’s part of my history, you know?” Gold said. “Taking a life is terrible, and then what I’ve done to his family really hurts me. That’s the worst thing, because that’s forever … and I’ve got to live with that.”