Four shot, left for dead on dark Palmdale road

A fourth man is wounded. All were from outside the area.

A lone survivor is taken to a hospital after residents of a remote area report hearing gunfire.

Four men from somewhere outside the Antelope Valley were shot and left for dead late Wednesday on a remote, unlit road above Palmdale, authorities said.

One survived and used his cellphone to call 911 at 11:16 p.m., Los Angeles County sheriff ’s Lt. Derrick Alfred said.

“He said he’d been shot in the face, but he couldn’t describe where he was because he didn’t know the area,” Alfred said.

Paramedics had to use triangulation to track the shooting victims, who were found at Ranch Center Drive and 40th Street South, a blocked-off road just north of Ritter Canyon at the edge of an abandoned housing project that was never completed.

They arrived about 10 or 15 minutes after the first call, Alfred said.

The lone survivor was taken to a hospital, where he was still alive late Thursday, but the three other victims, identified only as adult males, were pronounced dead at the scene, Alfred said.

The men were sitting two apiece in the front seats of a Toyota Camry sedan and an Audi SUV, authorities said. They were still in the cars when first responders arrived.

Very few people live in the area, except for employees at a horse ranch at Ranch Center Drive and Elizabeth Lake Road. One, who gave his name only as “Dave,” said he heard shots around 11 p.m.

“It sounded like an AK — a semiautomatic,” he said. “I heard about 20 rounds, and then 10 minutes later, a single shot.”

Another ranch employee who refused to give her name drove up to the shooting site Thursday. The location is about a mile from where she works. The woman pointed out small piles of bluish broken glass and what appeared to be a puddle of blood, mostly washed away after a day of rain.

The area is mostly wild and beautiful, she said, a plateau popular with horse riders and runners. Such a shooting, so close to home, was jarring enough, she said, but the thought that the victims were outsiders brought there to die seemed almost as upsetting.

The ranch “is the only thing within five miles of here,” she said. “It’s pitchblack at night and totally secluded … but why here? It’s not that secluded. What if someone was driving by? Why not go up into a canyon?”

Alfred said investigators are still trying to contact family members of the four victims. Based on their driver’s licenses, it appears two lived in other parts of California and two were from out of state, he said.

Investigators aren’t providing any other details about the men until all their families have been notified, authorities said.

No guns were found at the scene, and Alfred said he couldn’t go into detail about the ammunition that was found.

“It looks like a semiautomatic rifle may have been used, based on the evidence on the ground,” he said. “But we won’t know until the cars are taken apart and we find the bullets that were fired.”

Investigators don’t have any suspect information or a motive for the attack, Alfred said. Anyone with information is asked to call the sheriff’s Homicide Bureau at (323) 890-5500. Those wishing to remain anonymous should call Crime Stoppers at (800) 222-8477.