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.
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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 to coast following the killing of George Floyd.
Shootings in 2020 on Bay Area highways increased by 51% compared to 2019, at 124 shootings compared to 2019’s 82 shootings, NBC Bay Area reported. There was a roughly 88% increase in Bay Area shootings last year when compared to 2019.
Los Angeles was known as the road rage capital of the U.S. back in the 1980s and early 1990s but has since relinquished that title to other cities across the country, according to various studies on aggressive drivers.
In addition to LA having far lower numbers of freeway shootings compared to the Bay Area, shootings on highways across the state fell by 8% compared to 2021, according to the data.
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Many of the freeway shootings in the Bay Area have gone unsolved, as drivers flee following the incidents, witnesses do not cooperate or do not see the crime, and new cameras in hot spot crime areas are not yet up and running. The arrest rate in the Bay Area sits below 25%, while the statewide arrest rate for freeway shootings varies between 10-20%, KTVU reported.
"We need to prevent these situations from happening, not react to them. And unfortunately, my brother has passed. Jasper Wu has passed," Nguyen told the outlet, referring to a toddler who was hit by a stray bullet while in a car with his mom in 2021. "A lot of other people have passed in these senseless crimes and a lot of them are unsolved. And we need to figure out ways to deter and hold people accountable."
