2 Motorists Wounded by Gunshots

A 19-year-old Lakewood man, the victim of an apparently random car-to-car shooting early Wednesday in Harbor City, was in critical condition on life support systems, authorities said. A 20-year-old man was shot in an earlier, similar, incident in Wilmington.

Police said Kevin Lee Jones was driving home on Pacific Coast Highway when a car pulled up beside him at the traffic light on Vermont Avenue about 1 a.m. A flurry of shots were fired, one of which struck Jones in the head. He was taken to the intensive care unit at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.

“He was the furthest thing from a gang member you could find,” the victim’s father, Donald Jones, said Wednesday night, conjecturing that the shooting was random. Kevin’s maternal grandfather died recently, “so Kevin’s mother is devastated,” he said. “I’m worried about her. She’s been through the wringer.”

In the earlier incident, Caesar Villanueva of Wilmington escaped serious injury when assailants shot at his car from behind while he was driving on Anaheim Street late Tuesday, police said. A bullet passed through the left side of his head. He was treated at a hospital and released.