Freeway Gunfight; 1 Dead : In View of Rush-Hour O.C. Drivers

As passing commuters watched in horror, one man was shot to death and another wounded as men in two vehicles exchanged gunfire along the Santa Ana Freeway during the morning rush hour today, authorities said.

As commuters watched, the two groups fired at least 10 times after they had pulled their vehicles onto the shoulder of the roadway.

The incident occurred at about 8:40 a.m. on the shoulder of the northbound freeway just south of the Crescent Avenue exit, where at least three men in a beige van exchanged fire with two men in a yellow Toyota pickup truck, Anaheim Police Lt. Marc Hedgpeth said.

Hedgpeth said the shooting erupted after occupants of the vehicles motioned at each other to pull over.

“There was a brief discussion between the parties, and then shots were fired,” Hedgpeth said.

Police closed one lane of the freeway briefly while investigating.

Ten bullet casings were visible at the scene. Police said they believe at least two guns were used in the shooting.

One unidentified man, apparently a passenger in the van, was dead on arrival at Martin Luther Hospital Medical Center in Anaheim. An injured suspect from the pickup truck was in fair condition at UC Irvine Medical Center, authorities said.

“He’s awake and alert. He’s expected to live,” Lt. John Cross said.

Cross said the surviving participants to the shoot-out are giving differing accounts of the incident. Only one witness has stepped forward despite the fact the shoot-out took place in full view of rush-hour traffic, Cross said.

While police have not established a motive for the shooting, Cross said there is an indication that the participants may have known one another.

“This was not a classic, random freeway shooting,” Cross said.

At a service station on Euclid Avenue in Anaheim, where the injured man was driven in his friend’s pickup truck for help, mechanic Ricardo Arana, 23, said the driver of the truck told him in Spanish that the fight was over money.

“He said it was only a problem with money, nothing else,” Arana said in Spanish. “And he said that on the freeway there was a problem.”

Arana said the man did not elaborate, asking only that an ambulance be summoned for his friend, who was sitting in the passenger seat of the faded yellow truck clutching a wound to his abdomen.

“At first, we thought he had had a heart attack,” said Arvin Patel, manager of the station. “We didn’t know what was the problem.”

Patel said he telephoned 911. Within five minutes, he said, half a dozen Anaheim police units arrived on the scene.

After taking the driver of the truck into custody and the injured man to the hospital, Anaheim detectives found an automatic handgun in the back of the truck, a spent bullet casing and a partially consumed 12-pack of beer.

The victim’s blood-stained blue jeans, cut away by paramedics, were piled in a heap next to the truck, which was parked in the lot of the Arby’s restaurant next door to the station. Some wadded dollar bills were atop the jeans.