Trio of Recent Freeway Shootings Fuels Public Anxiety

At the Avis car rental agency in Anaheim, manager Jeremy Wilkinson hands the keys to a customer and directs her to the car’s location. She’s back within minutes. “I just can’t have a white car,” she said.

Calls pour into the California Highway Patrol from concerned women, some asking where they can buy life-sized dummies so it appears they’re not driving alone--in their white cars.

A 47-year-old Long Beach woman thinks about getting rid of her cellular phone. She decides not only is she going to keep the phone, she’s going to take a self-defense class. She, too, drives a white car.

The concern centers on a trio of shootings involving women in white cars on freeways.

Investigators are uncertain if all three shootings, which occurred within the past 2 1/2 months, are related, though they are still gathering evidence. Two of them involved the same gun.

It’s understandable, experts say, if women are alarmed by the chilling series of crimes. However, it should be noted that the odds of being a victim of such a crime are extremely low, experts say. In fact, in many places serious crime is as low as it has been since 1971.

The first of the shootings occurred Feb. 15. Melody Spicer, 47, of Orange County, was driving from the San Gabriel River Freeway to the Artesia Freeway in Cerritos when she was shot in the back.

Less than 40 minutes later, Helena Joyce Dobiesz was on the 7th Street offramp from the northbound San Diego Freeway in Seal Beach when she was fatally shot in the head. Ballistics tests showed the bullets came from the same gun, as did those fired into a house in Cypress 20 minutes before Spicer was wounded. No one was hurt in the Cypress incident.

Then, on Monday, Lani Autagavaia, 31, was shot to death on the Costa Mesa Freeway. Like Spicer and Dobiesz, Autagavaia was driving a white car.

“If it weren’t a white car in all three cases, you probably wouldn’t have heard about it,” said Malcolm Klein, director of the Social Science Research Institute at USC.

Sgt. Steve Despenas, a spokesman for the Santa Ana Police Department, said that although it is too early to rule out a connection between the latest shooting and the earlier incidents, the investigation is leaning in that direction.

“The similarities are that they are all women, and they were all driving white cars,” he said. The differences, he said, include the fact that the latest shooting happened at a different time of day, involved a different caliber of gun and occurred at closer range.

The motive, he said, is unknown. “In today’s society, everybody should be concerned if there is a homicide, but I don’t think it should be to the height of panic.”

In recent days, authorities have been trying to strike a balance in their advice to women: They should not be overly concerned with the incidents, but instead take common sense safety precautions, such as avoiding confrontations with other motorists and staying away from isolated areas at night.

That said, some are endorsing a few more unorthodox approaches.

Angel Johnson, a spokeswoman for the CHP in Orange County, which fielded 15 worried callers on Thursday, said she believed buying a dummy to pose as a passenger might be worthwhile.

“I think buying dummies is a good idea,” she said, “as long as they [the drivers] don’t try to ride in the carpool lane.” After spending several hours on the phone trying to locate the dummies for those who called, however, Johnson said she couldn’t find any place that sells them.

Several women interviewed last week said they had changed their travel patterns since hearing about the shootings. “I don’t go out much at night,” said Yvonne Wilson, 58, of Cypress, who drives a white Pontiac.

Adele Macias of Garden Grove is worried about going to night meetings. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

Some rental car agencies reported serving some wary customers. Whether Avis or Enterprise, the message was the same, said Thieu Nguyen, assistant manager of Enterprise Rent-A-Car in Buena Park: “A renter this morning said she didn’t want a white car.” Why? “Because three people were shot, and they were women in white cars.”