ANAHEIM : Gunman Misses Freeway Driver

In the second freeway shooting in the last three days in Anaheim, a 26-year-old Costa Mesa man narrowly missed being shot Monday while driving on the Santa Ana Freeway.

Samuel Mooradian, 26, was driving north near Lincoln Avenue about 10:30 a.m. when the passenger of a car passing on the left propped the barrel of a handgun on the window and shot at him, police said.

The bullet lodged in the left door post a couple of feet from Mooradian’s head, Sgt. Ken Brott said. Mooradian told police there was no incident that provoked the shooting.

“If it was a quarter-inch to the left or right, it would have come inside the window and hit me,” said Mooradian, who was en route to his job as an insurance broker in Anaheim. “It was pretty scary, that’s for sure. . . . I just pulled over and was kind of shaking there for a while. I got back in my car and drove to work and called the police.”

Mooradian told police that the man who shot at him is white, 25 to 30 years old, with an average build, dirty blond, shoulder-length hair and a bushy mustache. He was the passenger in an older yellow Pontiac, Brott said.

Mooradian was the third man shot at on Southern California freeways in May. Onhree days. On Saturday, Gilberto Valenzuela, 27, of Los Angeles, was shot in the head while he was a passenger on the Riverside Freeway in Anaheim.

Valenzuela was listed Monday afternoon in critical condition at UCI Medical Center in Orange.

On May 7, a 29-year-old Los Angeles man was killed after apparently cutting in front of another car on the Harbor Freeway in Los Angeles.