Random Gunfire Kills 1, Wounds 2

Police are looking for a man they believe went on a two-hour shooting spree Thursday night in Santa Ana, firing randomly at cars and killing one man and injuring two people, including a 3-year-old.

The gunfire began about 10:20 p.m. on the 1600 block of West Stanford Avenue, where several neighbors said two occupants of a light-colored, four-door car tried to engage them in a conversation moments earlier.

“This guy was parked and he tried to call us over to his car,” said Viola Smith, 18, who was standing on the sidewalk with her fiance and an aunt. When the men boasted of being “south side,” or from south Santa Ana, Smith said, her aunt told them to take off.

As they pulled away, one of the men opened fire on a passing car driven by Jose Valenzuela, who was on his way to his mother’s house. His 3-year-old son, Alberto, was asleep in the back seat.

“I saw a car passing by, slowly,” said Valenzuela, 29. “I only saw his headlights, then heard the shooting.”

One bullet pierced the door of his car, breaking into fragments. Another shattered the driver’s side window, showering Valenzuela and Alberto with glass. Valenzuela sped to his mother’s driveway and grasped his son before realizing the boy had been hit.

Alberto had been peppered with bullet fragments and flying glass. The most serious wounds were to his legs, but he was expected to be released from the hospital by this morning.

“It was completely random, without any provocation at all,” Santa Ana Police Sgt. Bob Clark said. “It started the whole night off and everything went downhill from there.”

About two hours after the Stanford shooting, an Anaheim man stopped at a red light at McFadden Avenue and Mohawk Drive in Santa Ana was shot in the head by the driver of a light-colored car, police said.

Hector Manuel Valencia, 30, was dead when officers arrived, slumped in the driver’s seat of his BMW. Witnesses said they heard at least two shots fired at the car. Again, a motive wasn’t clear, and police said Valencia was not a gang member.

“He was just sitting there, waiting for the light to change,” Clark said. “We have no reason to believe the suspect and [Valencia] knew each other. It’s just flat-out scary.”

Another shooting followed about 30 minutes later, at Fairview Avenue and 17th Street, where a couple in a Chevrolet Blazer were fired on by someone in a white, four-door Buick, police said.

The driver, Luis Mondragon of Garden Grove, was shot in the upper torso. Bleeding, he sped after the shooter’s car, heading northbound on Fairview until he was able to smash into it. The collision pushed the Buick off the road, through a yard and nearly into the side of a building in the 1900 block of Fairview. It also caused three other crashes among drivers behind, Clark said.

The gunman, described only as a young Latino, climbed through the passenger’s side window of the car and fired several more rounds at the couple before running away.

Mondragon, 21, was treated by paramedics at the scene; police said his wounds were not life-threatening.

“This could have turned out much differently, though,” Clark said. “Obviously, we had a crazy person on our hands, firing all over the place like that.”

Valenzuela, at Coastal Communities Hospital with his son Friday, said he had wondered whether his son had been lying “the other way on the seat, if he would have been hit in the head, or in his heart. I wonder if they would have killed him.”