Police Seek 2 in Shooting on Freeway in Anaheim

Police on Sunday were searching for two young men and a red Toyota pickup truck in connection with a freeway shooting Saturday that left a Los Angeles man clinging to life.

Gilberto Valenzuela, 27, was listed in critical condition at UCI Medical Center in Orange, after the 6 p.m. attack on the eastbound Riverside Freeway at the transition to the southbound Santa Ana Freeway in Anaheim. Valenzuela was shot once in the head.

Anaheim police Sunday searched for two white male suspects last seen in the 1981 or 1982 pickup truck. Police had no further description. Although Lt. John Cross said investigators had not determined a motive, Valenzuela’s family blamed the shooting on a verbal altercation between Valenzuela and occupants of the truck.

Valenzuela and a friend were driving to Anaheim to visit another friend when Valenzuela, who was a passenger, leaned out his window and began yelling at two men in a truck, according to Valenzuela’s sister, Marya Valenzuela, 22. She said he began yelling for no apparent reason.

“He was yelling, ‘Viva Mexico!’ and things like that to two white boys in the truck,” said the sister, who was told that version of events by Valenzuela’s friend, a man she knew only as Abel. “Abel told him not to scream, to calm down,” she said. “But he kept it up.”

Lt. John Haradon said Valenzuela’s friend, whom he declined to name, initially told investigators he did not know what prompted the attack.

“The case is far from being closed at this point,” Haradon said. “Much of his story needs to be substantiated.”

After the yelling, the men in the pickup truck disappeared from view momentarily but reappeared on the left side of the red Z-28 Camaro in which Valenzuela was riding, his sister said she was told.

The passenger in the truck then opened fire on the Camaro, police said. Haradon said between five and 10 shots were fired from a large-caliber gun, with five of the bullets striking the side of the car.

“They didn’t even hear the shooting at first,” Marya Valenzuela said. “Then the window on the driver’s side got broken out, and Abel told my brother to get down. When Abel came up (from ducking), he saw Gilberto lying on the car seat, with all kinds of blood everywhere.”

Valenzuela, a warehouse worker, was born in the Mexican state of Sonora and moved with his family to the Long Beach area at an early age, his sister said. One of eight brothers and sisters, he most recently had been living with family members in Watts. A former street gang member, relatives described him as friendly but quick-tempered.

“When somebody is playing with him, yeah, he’s got a bad temper,” said a brother-in-law, Luis Hernandez.

Last Monday, a restaurateur was fatally shot on the Harbor Freeway in Los Angeles. In April, a 16-year-old Bell Gardens youth was fatally shot while riding with friends on the Long Beach Freeway. And in January, one man was shot to death and another critically wounded when gunmen in two vehicles pulled to the shoulder of the Santa Ana Freeway in Anaheim, jumped out and exchanged fire.

In the summer of 1987, a series of freeway shootings resulted in criminal charges against 16 people.