Freeway shootings not linked

An incident Monday morning in which six vehicles were shot at with a BB or pellet gun on the 10 Freeway appears to be unrelated to two freeway shootings that occurred over the weekend, authorities said.

The windows of six vehicles were struck by pellets or BBs during a five-minute period around 8 a.m. along the westbound stretch of the San Bernardino Freeway between Frazier Street and the 605 Freeway in Baldwin Park, California Highway Patrol Officer Edmund Zorrilla said. No injuries were immediately reported.

The pellet-gun attacks followed a fatal shooting Sunday, in which a Los Angeles man was found shot in the head after his sedan crashed into a sound wall on the Ventura Freeway near Van Nuys Boulevard in Sherman Oaks.

Marlon Gordillo Sical, 20, was taken to a local hospital where he later died, and Los Angeles police are still investigating his death. Initially the shooting was believed to be a homicide, but late Monday investigators said the gunshot appeared to be self-inflicted. On Saturday, Sical’s girlfriend, Virginia Castillo, 19, also was found dead in her Los Angeles apartment in an apparent suicide, authorities said.

In a third incident, a man was shot and wounded in the wrist and leg Saturday night by another motorist while driving north on the Long Beach Freeway near the Del Amo Boulevard exit. The victim later told police it was an apparent case of road rage. Long Beach police are still searching for the suspect.

Two fatal freeway shootings last month have also set motorists’ nerves on edge.

On March 12, Debora Lepper, 54, a chiropractor from Rancho Cucamonga, was fatally shot in the head while driving east on the San Bernardino Freeway in Pomona. Police are trying to determine what caused the shooting and have not made an arrest in the case, CHP Officer Jose Nunez said.

And on March 1, passenger Bunthan Roeung, 26, died after a dispute between drivers on surface streets led to a vehicle-to-vehicle shooting on the Hollywood Freeway. Police are searching for the gunman.

California Highway Patrol officials Monday sought to dispel fears that such attacks were on the increase, saying the shootings remained under investigation and appeared to be unconnected.

“It’s just random acts of senseless violence, and they occur infrequently,” CHP spokeswoman Jaime Coffee said from Sacramento. “It’s unfortunate, but it’s random.”

Investigators say car-to-car shootings are particularly difficult to investigate. Drivers who may have witnessed the shootings are difficult to track down. Assailants can easily leave the freeway and speed away.

Some experts said it was important to view the shootings in the larger context, noting that despite a spike in freeway shootings in past years, such violence remained rare.

“To the public it can seem like they’re happening pretty frequently, but compared to the number of people who are traveling on our freeways, they’re pretty sporadic,” said Officer Tony Garrett, spokesman for the CHP’s Southern Division, which includes Los Angeles County.

Garrett recalled how freeway shootings first emerged as a Southern California phenomenon in the summer of 1987, when at least five people were killed and more than a dozen were injured. Motorists began placing conciliatory signs in car windows, adding bulletproof glass and arming themselves.

In 1998, freeway violence again drew headlines after three Orange County shootings left two women dead and a third injured. And in 2005, after a spate of eight freeway shootings in two months, the CHP appointed a task force to help local police investigate the incidents, some of which were caused by road rage.

Local police have been handling the latest investigations without the aid of a CHP task force. “We’re just looking at them now as different, random incidents,” Garrett said. “There’s really no trend.”

Anyone with information can contact the CHP at (800) TELL-CHP or (626) 338-1164; LAPD homicide Dets. M. Martinez or B. Shapiro at (818) 374-1952 or 1-877-LAWFULL (529-3855); and Long Beach police at (562) 435-6711.

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molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com

andrew.blankstein@latimes.com