Posted on 05/03/2005 6:45:17 AM PDT by television is just wrong
Clues Sought in Series of California Highway Shootings By NICK MADIGAN
Published: May 3, 2005
LOS ANGELES, May 2 - A spate of apparently random highway shootings in recent weeks has left at least four drivers dead and several more injured in Southern California and has prompted the authorities to increase undercover police patrols on the region's roadways, the busiest in the world.
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Since early March, there have been at least seven shootings on highways in Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside Counties, three of them this past weekend alone.
Here in Los Angeles, where most of the shootings have occurred, a police spokeswoman, Sgt. Catherine Plows, said on Monday that a victim of a shooting early Sunday in the San Fernando Valley described his assailants as a group of four or five young Hispanic men with shaved heads. The description led detectives from the police department's gang unit to look into the possibility that the shooting was part of an initiation ritual.
Sergeant Plows said that after being shot, the 19-year-old victim was able to get off the freeway and drive a few blocks before encountering paramedics who had responded to an unrelated accident. The man was treated at the scene and later taken to a hospital, where he was expected to survive.
The police say they do not know whether the other shootings might be gang-related. Highway shootings are not a new phenomenon here or elsewhere in the country, but the frequency of the recent attacks here has put drivers on edge.
"You never know what's going to happen," said Juan Mendez, an installer of wooden floors who was filling his gas tank Monday at a Unocal 76 station on Roscoe Boulevard, near the intersection of the San Diego Freeway where the early Sunday shooting occurred.
"Normally you're just driving around in your lane hoping you don't get hit by another car or that you're not going to be late for work, and yet suddenly you could get shot," Mr. Mendez said. "But we have no option except to use the freeways."
Another man nearby, Charles Keith, a retired machinist, said such shootings always hurt the innocent.
"We're living in a sick society," Mr. Keith said. "It might be random, it might have been gang-related. I heard that to be initiated, you got to take somebody out."
In the past, most highway shootings in and around Los Angeles have been ascribed to road rage. The trend gained national attention in the summer of 1987, when, displaying hair-trigger impulses reminiscent of the frontier West, Southern California drivers were responsible for the deaths of at least five of their fellow travelers. More than a dozen people were injured.
More recently, a rash of highway shootings near Columbus, Ohio, that began in May 2003 resulted in the death of a 62-year-old woman and unnerved thousands of travelers. Ten months later, the police arrested Charles A. McCoy Jr., 29, and concluded that he had fired at dozens of vehicles, houses and a school.
Sergeant Plows, the Los Angeles Police Department spokeswoman, said Monday that there had been 11 shootings this year on highways in her department's jurisdiction. Two people were killed and 13 were injured, she said.
The shootings appeared to be random, she said, when the demographics of the 15 victims were taken into account: Ten were Hispanic, four African-American and one Filipino, Sergeant Plows said.
Last year, there were 36 highway shootings in Los Angeles, she said, with one death; there were 46 such incidents in 2003, with 4 deaths, and 46 in 2002, 3 of them fatal.
"Not all of them hit the target, and they're not all necessarily car-to-car," Sergeant Plows said, referring to the likelihood that some of the gunmen were standing on firm ground when they fired at the vehicles.
Armando Clemente, a spokesman for the California Highway Patrol, said Monday that the agency had increased its highway patrols, in some cases by adding troopers on overtime.
"We're looking for anything out of the ordinary," Officer Clemente said. "Drivers who are overly aggressive, tailgating, making quick, unsafe lane changes - anything that may be an occasion for something not appropriate going on."
Even if it has precedents, Officer Clemente said, the wave of shootings is hardly commonplace. "It is frustrating and it is alarming for us," he said, "and we'll do whatever we can to put an end to this."
Judy Gish, a spokeswoman for Caltrans, the state transportation agency, which oversees 915 miles of freeways and highways in Los Angeles County, said the dozens of cameras on the roadways transmitted live pictures to traffic management centers but did not use videotape, so they were limited in their ability to record crimes as they occur.
Because the gunmen are in most cases in a moving vehicle, police say, escape is quick. Their victims, meanwhile, often crash, sometimes exacerbating whatever injuries they might have suffered. On April 13, James Wiggins, 47, smashed his car into a wall and died on the Harbor Freeway south of downtown Los Angeles after being shot by an unknown assailant. Mr. Wiggins and another man in his car had been on their way to a Bible study class.
It's obvious that honest decent citizens need to arm themselves....and have a God given right to save their own lives and the lives of their loved ones.
I suggest a Glock20 with Doubletap Ammo's 10mm 'Beartooth' load...should penetrate sheet metal quite nicely..
Failing that the new Leitner-Wise piston driven .499 or a .50 Beowulf with a short barrel should also be not only handy but excellent at disabling disintegrating the assasination vehicle as well it's occupants..
imo
LOL, I will keep that in mind. However, you have to be pretty darn sure you know who you are aiming for (sarcasm)
Socialist Ca with their gun control laws, protects this type of criminals. The person trying to protect themselves can very easily have the long arm of the law turn on them for carrying any weapon.
You could always invoke that option one last time to move to a better place.
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