ORANGE : Driver Injured in Freeway Shooting
A 30-year-old man was wounded in the arm by gunfire early Sunday morning while driving alone on the Costa Mesa Freeway, Orange police said, marking the third freeway shooting in Orange County and the fourth in Southern California this month.
The man, whom police declined to identify, was driving south near the Katella Avenue off-ramp at 12:15 a.m. when an older-model sedan pulled alongside his car from which someone fired a shot from an unknown-caliber gun, Police Sgt. Ed Falkenstien said.
Police found the wounded man sitting in his car along the freeway shoulder, and he was taken to a local hospital, where he was listed in stable condition, Falkenstien said.
On May 15, a Costa Mesa man narrowly escaped injury when a bullet missed him but struck his car while he was driving on the Santa Ana Freeway. Two days earlier, a passenger of a car driving east on the Riverside Freeway, Gilberto Valenzuela, 27, of Los Angeles, was shot on the left side of his head. Valenzuela died Friday of his injuries, a spokesman at UCI Medical Center said.
Earlier this month, in Los Angeles, a restaurant manager was killed by gunfire as he drove along the Harbor Freeway.
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