Shooting Prompts Freeway Closure

Tustin police closed two miles of freeway and walked it for three hours Monday, searching for clues after the city’s third apparent freeway shooting in as many months.

No one was hurt in the 3 p.m. incident on an interchange from the southbound Costa Mesa Freeway to the southbound Santa Ana Freeway, said Lt. Steve Lewis, a police spokesman.

The investigation began after a 17-year-old boy, whose name was not released because of his age, pulled off the freeway at Newport Avenue with what appeared to be a bullet hole in his flat right-front tire after reportedly seeing a motorist point a small handgun in his direction, Lewis said. The gunman was described as a man in his late 30s with wavy brown hair, wearing a long-sleeved red T-shirt and driving a white Ford Taurus.

“We walked the freeway searching for any forensic evidence, including casings,” Lewis said. The rush-hour closure of the two freeways for half a mile in both directions, he said, created “significant traffic congestion.”

There have been two other freeway shootings in Tustin in recent months: one in March that left a man dead, and one last month in which a motorist was shot in the neck. He has recovered.

Monday’s incident is the latest in a string involving guns on Southern California freeways. In addition to the man in Tustin, two motorists in Los Angeles and one in Riverside have been killed.