Man Kills Driver After Dispute on Long Beach Freeway

An angry driver shot and fatally wounded another man after a traffic argument as they sped along the Long Beach Freeway in Monterey Park on Sunday morning, authorities said.

Juan Grimaldo, 33, of Bell Gardens was driving north on the 710 Freeway north of Cesar Chavez Avenue shortly after 11 a.m., when he and another motorist got into an argument, said Los Angeles Sheriff’s Deputy Carrie Stuart.

The gunman’s car sped along the driver’s side of Grimaldo’s car, a white Nissan Pulsar, for about a mile. As Grimaldo was driving off the freeway on the Ramona Boulevard exit, Stuart said, the other driver fired a handgun twice and struck the man at least once in the upper body. The victim’s brother, a passenger in the car, was not hurt.

The Pulsar crashed through a chain-link fence and into an empty motor home parked in a storage lot.

The gunman sped off in a black 1980s Mitsubishi two-door sedan. He was described as in his 30s, thin, with short dark hair shaved on the sides. Grimaldo died about 5 p.m. Sunday at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center.

Freeway shootings were added to the list of urban horrors in the 1980s, and although the number of victims was not high compared to other kinds of homicides, the randomness of the attacks and the vulnerability of Southern California’s mobile population made the shootings especially unsettling. In the summer of 1987 alone, five people were shot and killed on Southland highways.

In 1992, a union local battling over wages and benefits angered area officials when it mailed to 2,500 convention planners around the nation a video titled “City on the Edge,” contrasting images of Los Angeles’ attractions with commentary about freeway shootings, gang violence and random mayhem.

Anyone who saw Sunday’s incident is asked to call the sheriff’s homicide bureau at (213) 890-5500.