Violence stretching from gang shootings to road rage incidents has propelled California’s San Francisco Bay Area to a record double the number of shootings on freeways compared to Los Angeles, a new report found.
There were 154 shootings across freeways in the Bay Area in 2022, KTVU found, double Los Angeles’ 77 freeway shootings last year.
Investigators in the area have primarily pinned blame on gang violence for the uptick, with gang hits on highways leaving innocent bystanders in the crosshairs, NBC Bay Area reported earlier this year.
California Highway Patrol Assistant Chief Jason Reardon told KTVU that about 85% of shootings on Bay Area freeways are gang-related.
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“The overwhelming majority of the freeway shootings are targeted shootings and what that means is a specific person is targeted for attack,” Reardon said. “Oftentimes, especially in gang-related cases, the vast majority of these cases, the victims don’t want to cooperate. They don’t tell us what they saw. They don’t tell us what happened.”
The rest of the violence is attributable to road rage incidents when a driver pulls out a gun and shoots a stranger after becoming enraged, according to Reardon.
“I’m literally driving to work and I’m scared for my life.”
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“I’m literally driving to work, and I’m scared for my life,” one Bay Area woman, Barbara Nguyen, told KTVU.
Her brother, Alameda County Sheriff’s recruit David Nguyen, was shot dead on Jan. 4, 2022 near the Bay Bridge toll. He was killed on his way home from a deputy training program and was one month from graduating before becoming a member of the sheriff’s office.
Freeway shootings in the Bay Area have been on the rise since 2020, when murders exploded across the country amid the COVID-19 pandemic and its lockdowns, and protests and riots erupted from coast…
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