Woman Driving on San Diego Freeway Is Shot to Death

A 20-year-old woman was shot and killed on the San Diego Freeway early Friday by two men who had followed her onto the freeway and then opened fire as they pulled alongside her car near the Inglewood Avenue exit, police said.

Authorities identified the victim as Ada Powell of Torrance and said they did not know what prompted the shooting. Police said Powell was driving her sister, Mary Lumpkin, to her job as a civilian security officer at the Los Angeles Air Force Base in El Segundo when the shooting occurred about 5:20 a.m. near the Inglewood Avenue interchange in Lawndale.

After Powell was shot, police said her sister grabbed the steering wheel and managed to drive the car to safety. The suspects were driving what was described as a white American-made sedan.

It was the third freeway shooting in the Los Angeles area in the last month and a half.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigators Friday asked for the public’s help in trying to identify a red car, possibly a Honda, involved in two freeway deaths in the San Gabriel Valley.

A 22-year-old Norwalk man, Phouthasack Vannarath, died last Saturday after being shot Oct. 9 as he drove on the Pomona Freeway in the City of Industry. And on Sept. 12, Quan Hoang, a 19-year-old Fountain Valley man, died from injuries he sustained in a traffic accident as he tried to avoid gunfire from a car that pulled up next to him on the San Bernardino Freeway.

Although both crimes bear some characteristics of gang shootings, neither victim has been linked to gangs, said Lt. Frank Merriman. Meanwhile, investigators have little evidence to draw on, he said.

In Friday’s incident, the occupants of the car from which the bullets were fired had honked at Powell and Lumpkin at the corner of Western Avenue and 190th Street in Torrance before the women pulled onto the freeway, said sheriff’s Deputy George Ducoulombier.

The car followed the sisters onto the northbound lanes of the freeway and pulled to the passenger side of Powell’s car just south of Inglewood Avenue.

At least four shots from a semiautomatic weapon hit Powell in the upper body and head. Lumpkin, who was reclining in the passenger seat, was not injured, Ducoulombier said.

Lumpkin grabbed the wheel and steered the car to the security gatehouse at the base a few miles away. Powell died at the base, Ducoulombier said. Both women work at the base, where Powell was a civilian pay clerk.

Hours after the incident, nobody answered the door at Powell’s home in Torrance. A neighbor said Powell had moved in only a month or two before.

“It wasn’t called for,” said neighbor Keith Grant. “She was a nice, nice young lady. I hope they find the guy.”

Times staff writers Vicki Torres and Otto Strong contributed to this story.