Motive Is a Mystery in I-805 Shooting Death

As his father watched helplessly from a trailing car, a teen-ager on his way home from a family gathering Sunday night was fatally wounded when a car pulled alongside his pickup and fired two shotgun blasts at his head.

The death of Richard Armando Gill, 19, baffles police.

Gill, who lived in the 3000 block of Iris Avenue in South San Diego, was returning from a family party in East San Diego about 11:30 p.m. when he was shot, said San Diego Homicide Lt. Paul Ybarrondo.

After entering southbound Interstate 805 from the 40th Street on-ramp, Ybarrondo said, Gill’s truck was overtaken by the assailant’s car, and shots were fired.

Gill’s father, driving behind his son, witnessed the shooting.

The car was described as a late 1980s model, light-blue Nissan with three occupants.

The shooting happened about 2 miles east of Balboa Park and about 1 mile north of California 94. The on-ramp from 40th Street that Gill had used to enter the freeway stretches nearly a mile before it joins I-805.

The bizarre circumstances of the apparently motiveless shooting at first led police to consider the possibility that it had been gang-related, but no evidence supporting that possibility turned up.

“Things are pointing away from that,” Ybarrondo said. Gill, father of a 2 1/2-year-old daughter by his girlfriend, was returning from an innocent family gathering, he said.

“Apparently there were no problems at the party, no arguments,” said Ybarrondo, who said Gill worked for his father.

Deputy Coroner Charles Kelley of the county medical examiner’s office said Gill was a drywall hanger.

Gill’s father witnessed the entire incident, said Ybarrondo, though he wasn’t able to get the license plate of the assailant, who exited after the shooting at the next off-ramp, which leads to Home Avenue.

According to the father’s account, the Nissan overtook the father’s vehicle “at a quite rapid speed,” and, the next thing Gill’s father saw were the flashes of the two shots being fired into the cab of his son’s truck, Ybarrondo said.

The truck ran into the center divider on the freeway and came to rest on the right shoulder of the road about a quarter mile later, Ybarrondo said.

Gill’s father stopped and drove his son to Paradise Valley Hospital in National City, where he was transported by Life Flight helicopter to UCSD Medical Center.

A spokeswoman there confirmed that Gill died at 10 a.m. Monday.

“Shootings on the freeway have to be considered rare,” police spokesman Bill Robinson said.